After Hamas attack, US rushed new F-35 capabilities, parts to Israel: Officials

WASHINGTON — US officials acted quickly in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel to provide new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter weapons capabilities and spare parts to the country, a lawmaker and defense officials said today.

The rapidly shared F-35 capabilities and parts, revealed during a congressional hearing, is one feature of Washington’s wide-ranging assistance to Jerusalem. The accomplishment for the program was an operational bright spot in a hearing otherwise dominated by concerns from lawmakers about the stealth fighter’s cost and schedule overruns.

According to Rep. Rob Wittman, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee, the F-35 program successfully “accelerat[ed] F-35 weapons capabilities and increas[ed] spare parts supply rates” after the Oct. 7 tragedy.

Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante testified today that Air Force Lt. Gen Mike Schmidt, who heads the F-35 program, and his team were able to share US-owned mission data files within a week’s time. After the hearing, Schmidt confirmed that LaPlante’s comments referenced capabilities provided to Israel, though he would not discuss specifics.

“We are always trying to provide spare parts and capabilities to every one of our customers,” Schmidt said.

Israel’s program of record includes 50 American-made F-35As, according to plane-maker Lockheed Martin, though in July Jerusalem said it would be buying 25 more. The Israeli military has noted its use in the current conflict in Gaza, including the shoot down of what appeared to be a Houthi-launched cruise missile in the first intercept of its kind for the fighter.

“We are going to learn a lot” from Israel’s F-35 operations, Schmidt told lawmakers, noting that the country’s fleet has “high” mission-capable and fully mission-capable rates. The US fleet, by comparison, has struggled with its readiness rates.

The hearing came as the war in Gaza stretches into its third month, and as senior Biden administration officials, including President Joe Biden, expressed more reservation about Israel’s aggressive response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, more than 17,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the attack.

TR-3, Block 4, and ECU

The hearing convened today otherwise focused heavily on the high-profile cost and schedule overruns that have afflicted the F-35 program, namely in its new Technology Refresh-3 (TR-3) system, future capabilities and a planned engine upgrade. 

According to Schmidt, the TR-3 effort — a set of new hardware and software that will provide the computing backbone for future capabilities — is struggling on the production line. Specifically, there are a select few parts that Lockheed and its suppliers are challenged to produce at a rate sufficient to meet the program’s current production schedule, as well as an eventual planned retrofit of existing jets. 

Industry is “not meeting our contractual requirements” to produce TR-3 kits at a sufficient rate, Schmidt told lawmakers. The Pentagon is not accepting new F-35s outfitted with TR-3 until software kinks associated with the system are worked out, which is now slated for sometime between April and June 2024. 

“They’ve got a little time here to ramp up, but they need to do it quickly parts-wise,” Schmidt told reporters after the hearing. “It’s not good to get to a certain point in the production line where this part needs to go in or that part and the part’s not there. That creates some kind of disturbance that is not healthy for a production line, and we’re all trying to work through that,” Schmidt added.

“Lockheed is paying a significant price relative to the contract,” he said, noting that the contractor “is incentivized to deliver here.”

In response, Lockheed said in a statement to Breaking Defense that “[o]ver the past few months, we began testing the next software release that will improve stability, radar, NextGenDAS and weapons capability. […] We also began test flights using TR-3 software on F-35 production jets in Fort Worth, and flight test continues at Edwards Air Force Base and Naval Air Station Patuxent River. As of early December, we have completed more than 160 flights. We also remain focused on expediting hardware delivery from our subcontractors that will be integrated with TR-3.”

The TR-3 program is now set for a budget overrun of nearly $1 billion, lawmakers said today, a cost borne by taxpayers due to the program’s cost-plus contract. Lockheed, however, has forfeited a $60 million fee and isn’t profiting on continued work, Bloomberg reported.

Wittman, who seemed skeptical of the program’s plan to finish TR-3 work by the middle of next year, said today that lawmakers’ “patience… is wearing thin” on issues like TR-3 and a suite of planned upgrades known as Block 4 that has also experienced its own cost overruns and schedule slips. 

Other lawmakers, like the subcommittee’s ranking member Donald Norcross, D-NJ, were “puzzl[ed]” by the Pentagon’s inability to certify that a proposed multi-year performance-based logistics (PBL) maintenance contract would either decrease costs or increase readiness. As Breaking Defense previously reported, the Pentagon has paused negotiations with Lockheed on the PBL due to an impasse over meeting the program’s certification requirements.

In his testimony today, LaPlante concurred with Norcross’s frustration, noting that officials are weighing other approaches like a PBL for particular subsystems rather than the entire aircraft. 

“We continue to view Performance Based Logistics contracting as the primary way to increase part availability, readiness, and affordability for the long-term as the F-35 fleet scales,” Lockheed said. “While we are disappointed with the decision, we remain committed to partnering with our customers to deliver sustainment support, enabling mission readiness and deterrence.” 

As for a plan to upgrade the jet’s engine, Schmidt emphasized to lawmakers that the fiscal 2024 budget would need to be approved to move forward with the development effort, dubbed the Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) that will be built by incumbent F-35 engine maker Pratt & Whitney.

Funding for the ECU initiative is “good through February-ish” under the current continuing resolution, but after that point, “we’re actually at risk of running out if we don’t have an appropriations.”