Lockheed Martin and the US Department of Defense said the resumption of deliveries of the fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II fighter jets could come later than expected. This means that the Pentagon will receive fewer planes than expected in 2023. This will affect the company’s revenue.
Here’s what we know
F-35 deliveries were paused in July of this year. Lockheed Martin has begun placing fighters built with the Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) hardware into storage. The company thought it could resume deliveries by the end of the year, but that has changed.
According to a new estimate, the first F-35 TR-3 fighters after the break will be delivered to customers next year. To be more precise, in the second quarter (April-June). So, by the end of 2023, Lockheed Martin will deliver 97 fighters instead of 100-120 as originally planned.
The company said the culprits for the delays are its F-35 program partners. In particular, the development of the L3Harris processor (ICP) caused delays due to unforeseen issues related to hardware and software development, component and system integration testing, and system qualification testing.
Lockheed Martin sent its experts to L3Harris to fix the problem. The company is also working with Raytheon to ensure delivery of the Next Gen Electro Optical Digital Aperture System.
The US defense company will deliver in 2023 a much lower number of F-35s than desired. Lockheed Martin initially planned to send 147-153 fighters to customers, but this was later corrected to 100-120 aircraft. At the same time, deliveries of the F-35 TR-2 continue.
Russ Goemaere said five TR-3 fighters have already rolled off the Lockheed assembly line. He said the program has already made significant progress, but the problems are related to software maturity, discovered during F-35 test flights. The Pentagon has decided to update the timeline for the resumption of deliveries due to the continuing risks of the TR-3 project.
Source: Breaking Defence
2023-09-06 22:56:16
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