Lockheed Martin will not protest NGAD award, and instead plans a ‘supercharged’ F-35 variant
April 23, 2025
In a first quarter earnings call, Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet revealed his plan to use technology developed for NGAD to keep the F-22, and especially the F-35, relevant for decades to come. By offering an 80% solution at 50% of the price, Lockheed hopes to win new business, while offering a ‘hedge’ against the failure of NGAD, or perhaps even a more cost effective alternative.
Taiclet said that Lockheed Martin has received a classified debrief on the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) decision from the US Air Force. “We did get a classified debrief from the US Air Force on their NGAD decision. And we are taking that feedback internally and looking at all the aspects that we were briefed on, which we can’t speak to because of the classification level. But we are addressing those. On a strategic basis, where we are going with this decision is not to protest it.”
Some have suggested that protesting the decision would have been a high-risk option, with the Trump administration having little tolerance for dissent or challenge!
Instead, Lockheed intends to focus on upgrading its F-35 Lightning II and F-22 Raptor fighters with sixth-generation technology, including those technologies developed for the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, some of them self-funded by Lockheed, and some funded by the US Government.
Taiclet explained that: “We are not going to protest the NGAD decision of the U.S. government. We are moving forward and moving out on applying all the technologies that we developed for our NGAD bid onto our embedded base of F-35 and F-22. I feel that we can have, again, 80% of the capability potentially at 50% of the cost per unit aircraft by taking the F-35 chassis and applying numerous advanced technologies, some of which are already in process in Block 4 and F-35, but others that we can apply and we are going to offer fairly rapidly to the Department of Defense to really take that chassis and supercharge it for the future. And that’s kind of a 5th generation plus concept for F-35. And that investment in NGAD technologies that we made over the last few years are going to be applied directly to that chassis.”
The aim is to create a “fifth-generation plus” version of the F-35 that will offer 80% of the capability of the Boeing F-47 at “potentially, 50% of the unit cost per aircraft.” This promises to keep the F-35 relevant for decades to come but could also potentially provide an alternative to NGAD, in the event of programmatic difficulties, cost growth or a simple change of heart.
“My challenge here on my aeronautics team is, let’s get 80 percent of six-gen capability at half the price. And that’s something that — these are engineers, you know, they wouldn’t have agreed to this if they didn’t think there was a path to get there. That’s something we’re going go out and do. And this is this best value approach that we’ve been kind of working our way towards that at Lockheed Martin over the last four or five years. How do we get best value to the customer who has a limited budget and an increasing threat?
“We have 70,000 engineers and scientists in the company working on really interesting stuff all the time. And some of the fifth-gen plus solution set is already being funded by the US government and the F-35 program itself. There are components, some of which are classified, so I can’t really specify them.
“And we plan on applying those [NGAD] technologies to our current systems, making our already proven products even more relevant to the future, as well as enhancing the capabilities we provide in ongoing and future development. For example, the knowledge and technology development gained from our investments in the NGAD competition strengthened our conviction to enhance the F-35 to a ‘5th generation plus’ capability. And I challenged the team to deliver 80% of 6th gen capability at 50% of the cost. In support of this vision, we’re also committing to drive disruptive innovation and building upon our recent established internal capabilities and AI autonomy, crewed-uncrewed teaming, and command and control systems across the whole company. We have aligned these technology investments with our customer priorities and demonstrated meaningful increases in capabilities at relatively low cost.“
This 5th generation plus upgrade could include new “materials, geometries, and countermeasures” developed as part of the NGAD effort, and would leverage new digital technologies to “create that best value equation. It’s novel for our industry to think that way, but we are thinking that way. Because value is as important or more important than [using] the highest technology available. It’s got to be scalable, it’s got to be affordable, it’s got to work every time. And so that’s what we’re after.”
Taiclet said that: “We’re basically going to take the [F-35] chassis and turn it into a Ferrari. It’s like a NASCAR upgrade, so to speak, where we would take the F-35 [and] apply some of those co-funded technologies both from NGAD and the F-35 program. And so there are techniques and capabilities we delivered with NGAD, our NGAD bid that were developed for that, that we can now apply here.”
With an expected eventual global fleet of around 3,500 F-35s, Lockheed Martin believes that it must “build exportability into each of these components.” Some of its planned upgrades are already a part of the F-35 programme of record as part of the Block 4 modernization project, but the US government will have the final say as to which upgrades will be made available to international F-35 customers. “Our goal is to make as much of this capability [exportable] that we can. We try to design [technology] in a way that’s hopefully an easier decision for exportability than a harder one.”
Taiclet detailed some of the upgrades that could be incorporated in an enhanced F-35 version. “There’s some techniques with that we’ve used for our NGAD offering that can be applied, whether they’re materials, they’re geometries, they’re counter-measures for stealth, so I can’t be seen,” Taiclet said. He specifically mentioned the company’s work on enabling the F-35 and F-22 to control unmanned collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs).
Taiclet also mentioned sensing and tracking technologies intended for the sixth-generation and longer-range weapons. Taiclet highlighted the importance of: “sensing the enemy at a distance greater than they can sense you. And so those kind of categories are radar, they’re passive infrared. And passive infrared is really important because if I’m transmitting radar, that means somebody else’s electronic warfare receiver can see me. And then they can maybe shoot me. Those kinds of sensors are really, really critical because (as I explained this in a meeting with the White House) dogfights are not what we want any more in air-to-air combat. We want to shoot the other guy before he even knows we’re there. That’s the first part of the equation. The second part of the equation is you want to have a tracking system and a weapon that can go farther and hit the enemy plane before they can ever even reach you with their weapon.”
Taiclet also itemised further enhanced stealth or Low Observability, saying: “Then you make sure they can’t find you. And that’s the stealth technology. And there’s some techniques that we’ve used for our NGAD offering that can be applied, whether they’re materials, they’re geometries, they’re countermeasures for stealth. So no, I can’t be seen.”
Sceptics question whether the F-35 can be meaningfully upgraded, in part because the airframe is too small to accommodate sensors of sufficient size and power, and in part because of innate power and cooling limitations. The aircraft also lacks a truly open architecture, and the programme has been heavily ‘vendor locked’, making rapid and agile upgrades of the type imagined for the NGAD impossible to achieve. The aircraft is also too lacking in range and payload to perform the role intended for NGAD. More controversially, critics of the F-35 programme point out Lockheed Martin’s terrible track record when it came to delivering the much more modest TR-3 and Block 4 upgrades.
