WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin says it delivered 191 F-35 stealth fighters in 2025, a record for the program facilitated by a backlog of jets held in storage.
The delivery total far surpassed the 110 copies of the tri-variant stealth fighter handed over in 2024, following a year-long pause in accepting new jets that was first reported by Breaking Defense. Deliveries of jets with an upgrade dubbed TR-3 resumed in July of last year, but the F-35 Joint Program Office has limited those aircraft to training and has not yet declared them combat capable.
Lockheed says the company can produce 156 jets annually, but it’s not clear exactly how many of the 191 deliveries consisted of jets caught up in the TR-3 backlog — which reportedly reached around 110 aircraft at its peak. The company declined to comment, citing a quiet period ahead of an earnings call scheduled for Jan. 29.
The program’s previous delivery high of 142 was hit in 2021, according to a review of the company’s annual financial reports, which dipped slightly to 141 in 2022 and then to 98 in 2023 due to the TR-3 issues that halted acceptances. Nearly 1,300 F-35s are operational globally, according to a Lockheed press release published Wednesday announcing the 2025 delivery count.
“I’m immensely proud of the F-35 enterprise for delivering on our production commitments, performing with excellence and growing our global partnerships in 2025,” Chauncey McIntosh, Lockheed’s F-35 program manager, said in the release. “As our warfighters continue to employ the F-35 to protect the interests of America and our allies around the world, we’re committed to continuing to push the latest technology into the hands of the warfighter to defeat any threat.”
The F-35 has been in high demand particularly in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though tensions with the Trump administration have led some customers like Canada to reevaluate their orders. The Swiss government announced in December it would be trimming its planned buy of the fighter, citing a cost dispute.
President Donald Trump has also taken a particular interest in the F-35, and in December said that discussions to expand the stealth fighter’s production capacity would soon be underway. The Air Force in a recent report highlighted a need to max out production of the stealth fighter to the tune of 100 aircraft annually to achieve an “acceptable military risk,” though Lockheed officials have since held firm to the yearly production figure of 156 aircraft.
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Funding for that kind of production expansion could be on the way: On Wednesday, Trump said in a social media post that the defense budget for fiscal 2027 should be $1.5 trillion, an increase of over 50 percent compared to fiscal 2026, while also threatening major defense contractors who don’t produce as many defense platforms as they can.