The Air Force expects to certify the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to carry nuclear weapons in January, once sufficient numbers of pilots and ground crew are trained to carry out the mission.
But it may not have the jets, equipped with the proper avionics and mission systems, needed to perform the nuclear mission until several months later, according to a new delivery schedule F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin described in a September filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
To carry a pair of B61-12 nuclear bombs, the F-35A needs what the Air Force has dubbed “Technical Refresh 3,” or TR-3: an equipment and software upgrade that is the backbone of the Block 4 version of the aircraft. Lockheed now expects to begin delivering TR-3 aircraft between April 2024 and June 2024, according to the regulatory filing.
In its budget request for fiscal year 2024, which begins Oct. 1, 2023, the Air Force said it planned to “continue initial TR-3 nuclear certification hardware and software development and testing” by Lockheed in fiscal year 2023.
Neither the office of the secretary of the Air Force nor the F-35 Joint Program Office would answer questions this week about the schedule for TR-3 nuclear certification.
F-35 is now scheduled to “reach operational certification” for a nuclear mission in January, Ann Stefanek, the chief spokesperson for the Secretary of the Air Force, told the Exchange Monitor on Wednesday. The milestone “refers to personnel being certified to carry out the mission.” The Air Force approved initial nuclear design certification for the jet itself in September 2022, Stefanek said in an email.
“The delay in acceptance of TR-3 aircraft will have no impact on the nuclear operational certification timeline,” the F-35 Joint Program Office told Exchange Monitor on Friday in a statement.
A Lockheed Martin spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
“The number of 2024 F-35 deliveries will depend on when the first TR-3 aircraft is delivered and the time needed to complete the customer’s acceptance process,” Lockheed wrote in its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “We continue to assess impacts to 2024 and will have updates as the test plan continues.”
B61-12 will be a homogenized version of four Cold War-era variants of the B61, the oldest active weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The B61-12 program will extend the life of the bomb for another 20 years and replace all previous versions except the B61-11, which will remain in the stockpile.
The Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration is responsible for certifying the bomb itself before delivering them to the Air Force.
The joint Pentagon-Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Council authorized mass production of B61-12 to begin in June at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The agency planned to deliver the final B61-12 to the Air Force by fiscal year 2026, according to its fiscal year 2024 budget request.
