Pentagon Holding ‘Very Active’ Talks to Enhance the F-35 with Sixth Generation Technologies

Lockheed Martin is holding “very active” talks with the Pentagon about enhancing the F-35 to a ‘5+ generation’ standard through the integration of several technologies that have been developed for the F-47 sixth generation fighter program.The firm’s chief executive Jim Taiclet commented: “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.” “We’ve gotten encouraging feedback,” he added, noting: “There’s significant interest in the government about discussing aircraft modernisation 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 previously stated that such upgrades would provide the F-35 with “80 percent of six-gen capability at half the price.”

The future of the F-35 program has appeared increasingly uncertain, with procurements by the U.S. Air Force set to be cut to just 24 fighters in Fiscal Year 2026 due to budget shortages and the need to prioritise funding for the development of the F-47 sixth generation fighter. A sharp contraction of the Air Force’s overall fighter fleet, very low availability rates in the F-35 fleet, and major overruns in procurement and particularly in operational costs, have been among the factors fuelling a consensus that very deep cuts to overall procurement plans, possibly by more than 50 percent, are likely. China’s unveiling of two new sixth generation fighters in December 2024 already at flight prototype stages directly caused a drop in Lockheed Martin’s stock value, and resulted in the Pentagon allocating a higher priority to the F-47 program, as prospects were raised that the F-35 would be left effectively obsolete for high intensity combat with a top tier adversary.

Possible delays to the F-47 program have the potential to provide a window for the F-35 to gain renewed attention as a stopgap, particularly if modernised to incorporate many of the same technologies. The apparent postponement of the Navy’s F/A-XX sixth generation fighter program have also raised a significant possibility that the service will show an interest in investing more in the F-35, including procuring enhanced variants. Questions nevertheless remain regarding the defence sector’s ability to implement such upgrades in a timely manner, with much more conservative upgrades having in the past consistently faced tremendous delays. Efforts to modernise the F-35 to the Block 4 standard, for example, have seen performance requirements watered down to minimise delays, although the date for bringing the F-35 up to this standard has still been pushed back by several years into the early 2030s. As the only fighter of its generation in production in the Western world, the F-35’s importance for the United States and its strategic partners is unprecedented for a single fighter class, with the capabilities it fields having tremendous implications for the balance of power across multiple theatres from the Middle East and Eastern Europe to the Arctic and Pacific.