WORLD: Budget: Air Force Gets More; Space Force Gets Cut; Shrinking Aircraft Inventory.
TR-3
William LaPlante said there’s been “significant improvement” in the program over the last decade, and program leaders can now “focus on the future of the F-35, instead of the past.”
The production rate for the F-35 will likely remain stable for at least five years, Lockheed Martin aeronautics executive vice president Greg Ulmer said.
“The year 2024 will stand as a transformative year for modernizing the U.S. Air Force’s fighter force. Bottom line: the service needs to reset fast. That is why it was welcome news when Lockheed Martin recently announced the Tech Refresh 3/Block 4 variant of its ...
New F-35s are coming off the production line with the TR-3 upgrade and going right into storage because testing is incomplete. Next lot negotiations are continuing, but talks over a performance-based logistics contract have stalled.
Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet thinks completing flight testing of the F-35 Tech Refresh-3 by the middle of 2024 is "manageable," saying the complex changes are taking time because the technologies are comparable to those in driverless cars and autonomous aircraft.
More delay may be in store for the TR-3 update of the F-35 fighter, program executive officer Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Test resources, software lab capacity, and too much concurrency have put the effort at least two years behind ...
The first F-35s with the Tech Refresh-3 upgrade—largely a processor upgrade upon which the Block 4 configuration of the fighter will ride—will be delivered before the middle of next year, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said Sept. 6. But that will have an impact on Air ...
Beginning with the fiscal 2024 budget, every dollar for F-35 will fund TR-3-equipped Block 4 jets. The need for those jets could hardly be greater.
Lockheed Martin won’t make its goal of 156 F-35s in 2023 due to engine delivery delays and continuing development and testing of the Tech Refresh 3 update, which underwrites the Block 4 upgrade. However the company expects a Performance-Based Logistics Contract by the end of ...
DOT&E Director Nickolas H. Guertin said the test enterprise must be reimagined, so weapons are no longer tested in isolation.
WORLD: Air Power: F-35 flies with Tech Refresh 3; B-21 family of systems; RC-26 aircraft to the Boneyard.
