An RAAF F-35A at the 2023 Avalon Airshow. Photo: ADF.
Deliveries of Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II combat aircraft to the Royal Australian Air Force have resumed following a year-long delay.
Three of the final nine F-35As on order arrived at RAAF Base Williamtown on 29 November after a ferry flight from Fort Worth in Texas in the US, where they are manufactured.
The aircraft have been in storage for more than a year pending clearance of a new package of hardware and software named Technical Refresh 3 (TR3), which will also be retrofitted to the 63 F-35As already in RAAF service.
The RAAF’s total order of 72 F-35As – out of an original requirement for 100 aircraft – is operated by four squadrons, comprising three fighter squadrons – Numbers 3 and 77 Squadron based at Williamtown and Number 75 Squadron at Tindal in the NT – and the Number 2 Operational Conversion Units (2OCU) also based at Williamtown.
The balance of the RAAF’s requirement for 100 combat aircraft has been taken up by the Commonwealth’s decision to retain and upgrade the RAAF’s 24 Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornets and 12 EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft, all of which are based at Amberley, west of Brisbane.
The F-35 was designed from the outset to be upgraded in capability ‘’Blocks’’ continuously throughout its service life.
Block 1 was the initial flight test configuration, Block 2A offered the first operational capabilities and data fusion from the aircraft’s sensors, Block 2B saw the first basic combat capabilities and greater sensor fusion added, Block 3i hosted the first ‘’interim’’ group of all-round combat capabilities, and Block 3F is the current configuration.
Each new major software Block needs to be hosted on upgraded hardware supplied through a TR upgrade, although there are software and hardware elements of both. In simple terms, the 63 F-35As delivered so far are running Block 3F software on TR2 hardware, while the final nine aircraft were built with TR3 components.
The TR3 development was to have been finished in April 2023, but ran more than a year overdue. Its development was impacted partly by the effects of the pandemic, a lack of availability of flight science (test) aircraft, and what the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) described as unrealistic expectations on how long it would take to develop the upgrade.
This has resulted in about 100 F-35s of various models having to be stored at Fort Worth pending their clearance.
Block 4 isn’t ready yet, and won’t be delivered in one massive upload. Rather, it will be delivered in packets over a decade as new capabilities are tested and proven. Some of these will include enhanced electronic warfare modes, new sensors and communications, and more advanced weapons.
The Block 4 upgrade has also suffered from what is known as ‘’capability creep’’ through the addition of more capabilities than were originally planned.
Reports earlier this year said that while Block 4 was originally meant to have 66 new capabilities by 2026, this had blown out to 80, which may not be complete until 2029.
The JPO acknowledged Block 4 was having “significant issues” with its maturity and integration schedules earlier this year, and said Lockheed Martin and its industry partners had identified high-risk concurrency in the schedule, which was threatening to shut down aircraft production.
The issue of concurrency – where aircraft are in production while flight testing and development are still underway – has plagued the F-35 throughout its history, resulting in the program slipping more than five years from its original schedule.
