Braxton Taylor
In the wake of its loss in the Next Generation Air Dominance competition, Lockheed Martin plans to take the technology from its bid and funnel it into its F-35 program to pitch a lower-cost alternative to the future F-47.
“The knowledge and technology development gained from our investments in the NGAD competition strengthened our conviction to enhance the F-35 to a fifth-generation-plus capability. And I challenged the team to deliver 80% of sixth-gen capability at 50% of the cost,” Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet said Tuesday during the company’s first-quarter earnings call.
The company received a classified brief on why the service picked Boeing, Taiclet said—and they won’t protest that decision. Instead, the company will take the “feedback internally” and apply the tech it developed for its NGAD bid to the F-35 and F-22 programs.
Taiclet described the future upgrade as turning the F-35 chassis into a “Ferrari,” with more stealth technology and new long-range tracking systems and weapons to “supercharge” the jet.
But the F-35 program has struggled with inserting new technology into the plane. The company is years behind and more than $1 billion over initial estimates for delivering Technology Refresh-3, a new suite of software and hardware upgrades needed for Block 4 improvements. The company said it has finished 98% of the TR-3 capability, but hasn’t confirmed when it will be combat ready.
Still, Taiclet remains confident the F-35 can reach almost sixth-gen status despite the program’s troubles: “My challenge to my aeronautics team is, let’s get 80% of sixth-gen capability at half the price. And these are engineers, they wouldn’t have agreed to this if they didn’t think there was a path to get there.”
The Air Force’s decision in March to pick Boeing to build the F-47 fighter jet means Lockheed is out of sixth-generation fighter programs for the foreseeable future, since the company has been dropped from the Navy’s F/A-XX program.
The company is also facing an uncertain landscape for future F-35 buys after the Pentagon announced plans to reallocate 8 percent of the next five years’ budgets to fund other initiatives—and President Trump’s threats to allies have thrown at least some future international sales into doubt.
Despite the uncertainty, the company plans to maintain its 156-per-year production rate, and Taiclet said international demand for the jet remains strong.
“Our aeronautics team feels that if there’s some moderation, which we do not expect by the way, in U.S. F-35 production, that we can make up for that in the international opportunities we have and maintain our 150-plus per year production rate. So we’re comfortable that, that can be maintained.”
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