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.
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.
In March, when the F-35 was finally been cleared for full-rate production, 17 years after the aircraft first took to the air, customers were still not accepting new aircraft.
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TR-3 has been described as the F-35’s new ‘computer backbone,’ since it promises to provide 25 times more computing power than the existing TR-2 computing system.
Some of the unclassified upgrades are expected to be part of Block 4. The exact configuration is not publicly disclosed just yet. U.S. Department of Defense
The yearlong delivery hiatus has had a major knock-on effect on the program, both for U.S. and foreign customers.
Lockheed says it will be able to deliver F-35s at a rate of one aircraft per day, but even if it meets that target, it will take more than a year to catch up on deliveries of the stored jets. At the same time, new F-35s continue to come off the production line, making it even harder to address the backlog.
With deliveries on hold, plans to establish new squadrons, train new crews, and accelerate the replacement of older aircraft types have been impacted across the F-35 user community.
An example of these problems came to light late last month, when Denmark announced that the six F-35As it uses for training at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, will be relocated to Denmark, to help make up for the delivery shortfall of new production aircraft.
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To try and keep things moving, the Joint Program Office and the U.S. military have come up with two separate TR-3 software releases.
“The first release (40P01) is a truncation of the TR-3 software at a point when the code is stable, capable, and maintainable to deliver TR-3 configured aircraft for use in combat training, but it is not until the second software release (40P02) that full combat capability is realized.”
Isn’t it wonderful as a NATO country to be forced to buy American, especially when the vendors know that you are being strong armed into buying their stuff and sell you absolute lemons. See also US / EU NATO Expenditure – is the balance really so lopsided?
Robin Edgar
Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft
