Following An Accident Earlier This Month Lockheed Martin Has Stopped F-35 Deliveries

The crash landing of an F-35B near Lockheed Martin’sLMT
assembly line in Fort Worth, Texas two weeks ago, has not only grounded a number of F-35s until at least early January – it has halted deliveries of the stealth fighter to the U.S. and its allies.

Just before the New Year’s weekend, Lockheed Martin announced on Friday it has halted acceptance flights and deliveries of new F-35s as an investigation into the cause of the F-35B mishap unfolds. The cessation of deliveries means that Lockheed will not meet its contractual obligation to hand over 148 F-35s to the Pentagon in 2022.

Defense News obtained a statement from Lockheed spokesperson, Laura Siebert, who acknowledged that “given the delivery pause, we delivered 141 aircraft” this year. The delayed delivery of seven F-35s until the mishap investigation clears a resumption of acceptance flights for the military may seem trivial but as I’ve previously observed, Lockheed Martin’s production schedule is under pressure with a raft of European orders, the latest from Germany.

The acceptance flights, generally performed by military pilots acting on behalf of the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Management Agency, confirm the functionality of each new-build aircraft before the Services sign-off on delivery. While the exact nature of the F-35B accident that led to the stoppage of functional check flights is unknown, possible changes to the aircraft’s propulsion system – reportedly related to a tube used to transfer high pressure fuel to the airplane’s Pratt & Whitney F135 engine – in the latest production lot may signal a problem Lockheed needs to understand before deliveries resume.

The delivery pause is the latest black eye for an aircraft 20 years into development and first declared operational in 2015 by the Marine Corps. The F-35 Joint Program Office, which grounded an unspecified number of F-35s earlier this week with a Time Compliance Technical Directive [TCTD] maintained that they will be barred from flight pending the investigation and until procedures can be developed for their return to flight.

That would have implications for F-35 operators here and abroad. Since the grounding is apparently not limited to one variant (F-35A, B & C), whatever procedural changes pilots will need to incorporate not only affect American forces, but F-35 partner nations and customers who operate both the F-35A and F-35B. Unless the procedural changes are dead simple, promulgating them to users of the affected aircraft will take time.

The longer the delivery pause interval, the more attention may be focused on a pending decision on whether to fund an alternative advanced engine (General Electric’sGE
XA100 adaptive engine or Pratt & Whitney’s evolutionary XA101) for upcoming improved Block 4 versions of the F-35. Given that Pratt & Whitney’s F135 powers every F-35 built so far, tracing the issue that has grounded new-build Lightning IIs back to the powerplant could have significant repercussions for decision-makers in the Pentagon and congress.

Alongside the halt in deliveries came an announcement on Friday that DoD and Lockheed Martin had agreed on a contract to deliver up to 398 F-35s for U.S. and international buyers over the next three production lots (lots 15-17). The contractor has previously declared it expects to deliver 147 to 153 jets per year in 2023 and 2024 though a DoD announcement last week confirming an order for an additional 118 jets in production Lot 18 (expected to be completed in January 2024) could marginally change those numbers.

So could the interruption in deliveries. Every F-35 customer will be watching to see how long it lasts.