WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin is in “very active” conversations with the Pentagon about the concept of a fifth-generation-plus F-35 that would include some of the technologies the company has developed for its sixth-generation fighter concepts, Lockheed’s chief executive said today.
“There’s a very active engagement at an extremely high level with the Department of Defense, and I expect it’ll be taken to the White House sometime soon, hopefully, to consider this kind of concept,” Jim Taiclet told investors at the Morgan Stanley conference. “We’ve gotten encouraging feedback. … There’s significant interest in the government about discussing aircraft modernization writ large, all the way up to the administration level, the White House level, and we’re in the middle of that with them, and we’re getting heard. We’re hearing back, and it’s pretty active.”
Taiclet first announced what he then called a “Ferrari” version of the F-35 in April, just weeks after Lockheed lost out on the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) contract that went to Boeing’s F-47. At the time, he said that the company could take tech developed for NGAD and incorporate it on the F-35, giving the stealth jet “80 percent of six-gen capability at half the price.”
The Lockheed CEO repeated that talking point today, though he noted that there is no contract inked for this souped-up version of the F-35. And, even if one is eventually signed, it may not be apparent to investors, he warned.
“The way to contract this will probably not be visible to folks, because it will have so much classified content that it may not be disclosable, but I’m really quite confident that this concept has great merit,” he said. “We can provide value at that level, at that scale, by integrating sixth-generation technology, digital and physical, into our aircraft we’re already building.”
Of the about 2,300 F-35s yet to be delivered to the jet’s customer base, Taiclet estimated that anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 aircraft could be delivered as the “fifth-gen plus” version, even if export restrictions prohibit international buyers from being able to purchase that configuration. Upgrades for those jets could include new weapons, an improved stealth coating and potentially a more advanced engine, he said.
The White House, Defense Department and F-35 Joint Program Office did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
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While no senior defense or F-35 JPO officials have commented publicly on Lockheed’s fifth-gen plus F-35 pitch, President Donald Trump in May shocked aviation geeks everywhere when he expressed interest in an upgraded, twin engine version of the F-35.
“We’re going to do an F-55, and I think — if we get the right price, we have to get the right price — that’ll be two engines and a super upgrade on the F-35,” he said during a business roundtable in Doha.
At the time, Lockheed thanked Trump for his support of the F-35 program and said it would “continue to work closely with the Administration to realize its vision for air dominance.” Neither Taiclet nor any Lockheed F-35 program official has ever referenced the F-55 in subsequent comments, and several aerospace experts told Breaking Defense that turning the F-35 into a twin engine strained credulity.
Meanwhile, the schedule for the F-35’s ongoing modernization effort, known as Block 4, continues to be beset with delays. The Defense Department now expects Block 4 modernization to be complete in 2031 — five years later than the original schedule — even as the scope of the upgrade effort is reduced to include fewer capabilities, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office released last week.