Lockheed Martin to deliver up to 190 F-35s in 2025, clearing out backlog and paving way for Block 4

A US Air Force Lockheed Martin F-35, photographed at an airshow in 2024. The company intends to deliver up to 190 F-35s to customers in 2025 as it clears out a backlog of stored TR-3-equipped aircraft. (US Air Force)

Lockheed Martin intends to deliver between 170 and 190 F-35s to customers in calendar year 2025, a rate the company intends to keep up “probably for the next couple of years” as it clears out a backlog of stored aircraft, the company's F-35 general manager Chauncey McIntosh said on 3 March at the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) Warfare Symposium.

The company delivered 110 aircraft in 2024. Although 156 F-35s per year roll out of Lockheed Martin's factory in Fort Worth, Texas, deliveries were suspended from June 2023 to July 2024 due to stability issues with Technical Refresh-3 (TR-3), a hardware and software upgrade intended to pave the way for Block 4 configuration, which adds a suite of new capabilities and weapons options. An undisclosed number of TR-3-equipped aircraft were placed in storage pending TR-3 stability. Deliveries with a limited TR-3 version, designated 40R01.351 – suitable for training but not combat-capable – resumed in July 2024.

“We have now demonstrated and provided that [TR-3] computing resource,” McIntosh said, declining to specify when TR-3 would be certified as combat-capable. “You should continue to expect that we're going to roll out sensor upgrades [and] roll out weapons to this platform” with Block 4.

“I'm going to focus on my team and working with the [F-35] Joint Program Office to [ensure] that we're continuing to deliver capabilities,” he told Janes in a subsequent interview. “That declaration of when any one particular customer declares [TR-3] combat-capable is going to be on that customer.”