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| Science & Technology |
| F-35 Deliveries Finally Cleared To Resume, New Jets Will Be Limited To Training |
| 2024-07-16 |
| [WarZone] After a yearlong hiatus, production F-35 deliveries are resuming, but the long-awaited Block 4 upgrades will have to wait. A fix of a kind has been found for problems with the F-35’s vital Tech Refresh 3 software, or TR-3, which had seen production deliveries suspended for around a year. Deliveries of the stealth fighters will resume "in the near future," clearing a backlog of jets sitting in storage, although the TR-3 is only installed in what’s described as a "truncated" form, raising questions about when the F-35 will actually be able to make full use of the long-awaited Block 4 improvements that this software underpins. The F-35 Joint Program Office announced yesterday that Lt. Gen. Michael J. Schmidt, the F-35 program executive officer, approved the use of the "truncated" TR-3 software on July 3. This means that more than 90 (perhaps as many as 120) F-35s that had been manufactured but then put into storage at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas, plant can be delivered. These jets are destined for both U.S. and foreign customers. In the meantime, the TR-3 software remains in flight testing, with the aim of achieving a long-term fix. Schmidt’s decision was made, the JPO explains, "after extensive coordination with the services, Joint Strike Fighter Executive Steering Board, pilots, maintainers, and industry." As we have reported in the past, the first flight of an F-35 test jet with a version of the TR-3 backbone took place in January 2023. Production jets then began to be completed with TR-3 processors and related hardware. However, TR-3 has suffered numerous delays that have contributed to significant cost overruns in the program. The ongoing issues meant that deliveries of these aircraft were suspended in July 2023. As of December 2023, it was reported that the development of TR-3 would be completed sometime between April and June of 2024 — after this, the same TR-3 enhancements would have to be incorporated into the existing jets. By January of this year, Lockheed Martin was saying it didn’t expect F-35 deliveries to resume until late this summer, but it also confirmed that thought was being given to accepting jets before then, without the fully validated TR-3 hardware and software. This is the workaround that Schmidt signed off earlier this month. Related: F-35 07/14/2024 Dutch court: Government not violating weapon exports ban to Israel by supplying US F-35 06/30/2024 Panic Time: Netherlands' Wealth Tax Gets Shot Down, Must Be Refunded F-35 06/29/2024 US shifts assault ship to Mediterranean to deter Israel-Hezbollah escalation |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #2 #1 That's because Israel wouldn't buy f-35 with original software |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-07-16 12:12 |
| #1 F-35 Lightning II Israeli procurement RETRO Why Only Israel Can Customize America's F-35 (At Least for Now) |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-07-16 11:43 |