The Northrop Grumman-made Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile is intended to replace the Cold War-era Minuteman III missiles, which were first introduced more than 50 years ago and are well past their expected service life.

But Sentinel’s cost, which was originally expected to be about $77.7 billion, ballooned, largely due to the rising price of constructing a vast network of missile silos and launch control centers, spread out over thousands of miles in the Great Plains region.

Sentinel was on track to cost about $160 billion, well over twice the original estimate, when the Pentagon in January 2024 declared a cost overrun process called a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach and launched a review process.

The Sentinel program was also originally expected to reach initial operational capability in 2029, but that deadline first slid to 2030 and is now dropping further behind schedule.

In July 2024, the Pentagon decided the LGM-30G Minuteman III replacement was too critical to national security to cancel. But while Sentinel would continue, the Pentagon told the Air Force to restructure the program and bring its costs under control.

The Sentinel program’s Milestone B approval, which was originally made in September 2020 and authorized the program to move into its engineering and manufacturing development phase, was also revoked by the Pentagon at that time.

The Air Force said Tuesday that the restructuring of the Sentinel program is now projected to finish by the end of 2026, along with a new Milestone B decision. The service said it has “leverag[ed] considerable progress over the last 12-18 months,” and is carrying out a “transformed acquisition strategy” allowing it to move quickly.

“Modernizing our nuclear deterrent is a critical priority!” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in a post on X. “The Sentinel program is on a data-driven path to deliver this capability, replacing a 1970s-era system to guarantee Peace through Strength for decades to come.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last August created a position dubbed the direct reporting portfolio manager, or DRPM, for critical major weapon systems — including the Sentinel and Minuteman III, the F-47 sixth-generation fighter and the B-21 Raider stealth bomber — to oversee the Air Force’s major programs.

That DRPM official, Gen. Dale White, is intended to be able to “cut through bureaucracy” and make decisions faster to rapidly deliver major capabilities at large scales, the Air Force said.

“The DRPM has the direct authority to make decisions, informed by integrated inputs across the enterprise and in alignment with the mission priorities set by the Secretary of War and the Secretary for the Air Force,” White said. “That construct allows us to resolve tradeoffs quickly and move with the speed required to deliver credible deterrence, while preserving the discipline this mission demands.”

The Air Force said that after taking the new DRPM role, White and the Sentinel team conducted a detailed review of the program, and decided it was on track to finish its restructuring phase this year and to deliver initial capability in the early 2030s.

A new cost estimate for Sentinel was not immediately available, but a U.S. official told Defense News that the Milestone B process typically involves an independent cost estimate from the Pentagon’s Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, or CAPE. The Pentagon said in July 2024 that Sentinel could cost $140.9 billion with a revamped acquisition process.

In a copy of the justification notice posted online Thursday, the Air Force said it needed to award the U.S. defense giant a sole-source contract because it is the only vendor that makes the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator. Issuing the contract to any other vendor “would result in unacceptable delays” and undermine the Air Force’s readiness, the service said in the notice.

“This action is essential to restore operational readiness … and ensure Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) possesses the necessary assets to support strategic contingency war plans for all Combatant Commands,” the justification and approval notice said.

The MOP is a 30,000-pound guided munition that the Air Force uses to destroy hardened or deeply buried targets such as underground labs or enemy bunkers. The MOP’s steel casing allows it to penetrate an estimated 200 feet through rock or other dense substances before detonating its conventional, but massive, payload.

The Air Force dropped multiple MOPs on Iran’s Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant from B-2 Spirit stealth bombers.

The estimated cost of the recent GBU-57 award was redacted from the copy the government posted online, but a box was checked elsewhere indicating it will be more than $100 million.

The procurement will buy more tail kits to guide the MOPs to their targets, with delivery starting in January 2028, as well as all-up-round weapon system components.

In a statement, the service said this shows a central pillar of its CCA strategy — that they can be easily modified and upgraded using a modular open systems architecture — can work, and improve how the defense industrial base operates.

CCAs are drone wingmen that are intended to fly sem-autonomously alongside aircraft such as the F-35A and next-generation F-47 fighter. The Air Force hopes to field at least 1,000 CCAs in varying configurations, and have them carry out missions such as strike operations, reconnaissance, electronic warfare and as decoys to lure enemy fire away from piloted fighters.

The Air Force in 2024 contracted with General Atomics and Anduril Industries to make its first CCAs, the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively. Ground testing for both began in spring 2025, and later that year, flight tests began.

This third-party autonomous software was integrated into both CCA models using a system called Autonomy Government Reference Architecture, or A-GRA, the service said. This shows that mission software can be “decoupled” from the hardware used by specific vehicles, the service said, and make technology integration easier.

“Verifying A-GRA across multiple partners is critical to our acquisition strategy,” Col. Timothy Helfrich, the Air Force’s portfolio acquisition executive, said in the statement. “It proves that we are not locked into a single solution or a single vendor. We are instead building a competitive ecosystem where the best algorithms can be deployed rapidly to the warfighter on any A-GRA compliant platform, regardless of the vendor providing the algorithm.”

By preventing “vendor lock,” the Air Force said, the service will be able to rapidly install new software and algorithms into CCAs, making a more agile force that can keep up with evolving threats.

General Atomics and Anduril each released their own statements about the integration success.

General Atomics said the integration of RTX subsidiary Collins Aerospace’s software — dubbed the Sidekick Collaborative Mission Autonomy — using A-GRA allowed the YFQ-42A to conduct its first semiautonomous airborne mission and launch flight tests.

The software’s integration with the YFQ-42A’s flight control system allowed “robust and reliable” data exchange with the CCA’s mission systems, which ensured the drone precisely carried out the software’s commands.

General Atomics said a human operator on the ground transmitted commands directly to the YFQ-42A, which the drone then accurately followed, for more than four hours.

“We are excited to collaborate with Collins to deliver enhanced autonomous mission solutions,” said David Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. “The integration of Sidekick with our YFQ-42A demonstrates our commitment to innovation and operational excellence in unmanned aircraft technology.”

Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering, called integrating mission autonomy into CCAs “a meaningful step towards fielding a real operational capability by the end of the decade.”

“YFQ-44A was designed from the ground up with an emphasis on modularity,” Levin said. “The aircraft’s simple design, external weapons stores, and open hardware and software architectures ensure that the aircraft can easily be configured with a range of mission systems, software suites and payloads to support a wide variety of missions.”

Levin said Anduril has worked closely with Shield AI on integrating its autonomous software for several months, and that the company “look[s] forward to flying YFQ-44A with their software onboard very soon.”

In its policy paper, “Strategic Attack: Maintaining the Air Force’s Capacity to Deny Enemy Sanctuaries,” experts from the Mitchell Institute argue that the Air Force needs at least 300 next-generation F-47 fighters and at least 200 B-21 Raider stealth bombers to counter China. The Air Force has previously signaled it plans to buy at least 185 F-47s from Boeing and at least 100 Northrop Grumman-made B-21s.

In an online discussion about the paper, former F-16 pilot and Mitchell Institute director of research Heather Penney warned that past U.S. wars such as Korea and Vietnam, and Ukraine’s current war against Russia’s invasion, have showed that militaries who can’t or won’t hit enemy bases and other sanctuaries from the air risk falling into grueling wars of attrition, akin to trench warfare.

And without a significantly boosted combat fleet able to project long-range air power in force, Penney said, the United States could find itself in a similar danger against China.

“China is deliberately building the capabilities and the posture to effectively make the entire western Pacific their sanctuary,” Penney said. “But we know from history that allowing an adversary that kind of sanctuary allows them to win, and it’s a recipe for our own defeat.”

The Air Force has carried out recent strike operations such as Midnight Hammer, which bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, exceptionally well.

But Midnight Hammer employed the service’s entire fleet of available B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, Penney said, some in the strike portion of the operation and some as decoys. And if Iran shot down any of those B-2s, Penney said, the Air Force couldn’t replace them — nor could the Air Force carry out a similar mission the next day if a second strike was needed.

And if the U.S. found itself in a conflict with China or other major regional power, Penney said, the Air Force would have to deal with a threat far more dangerous than Iran, with significantly better air defenses. Without a great enough combat aircraft reserve, Penney said, the Air Force might have to stay outside China’s air defenses and refrain from more daring strikes to avoid losing irreplaceable planes — but a conservative strategy like that might not be enough to win, or deter China from a first strike against Taiwan.

“The inability to hold [Chinese] targets at risk really provides a singular reward to a first mover, to an aggressor,” Penney said. “So if China doesn’t see any risk to their homeland, to their population, to their infrastructure, they can afford to lose some of those assets on the edge, because they know that they can hold us at bay. So it really erodes our ability to keep them from taking that kind of aggressive action.”

Penney and the Mitchell Institute argued that the Air Force also must take interim steps to maintain its combat airpower until the B-21 and F-47 come online in significant numbers.

That means refraining from retiring any legacy B-1 Lancer or B-2 bombers until the Air Force has at least 100 B-21s on hand, the Mitchell Institute report said. And the institute called for Congress and the Pentagon to provide the Air Force enough funding to speed up the acquisition of the B-21.

And the Air Force needs to boost its procurement of the fifth-generation F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, the F-15EX Eagle II and autonomous drone wingmen the service calls collaborative combat aircraft, Penney said.

This means buying 74 F-35As and 24 F-15EXs each year to start to turn around decades of cuts to the force, she said.

“The Air Force must reverse its fighter crisis and procure F-35s and F-15EXs at maximum rates: No more ‘divest to invest,’” Penney said, referring to an Air Force strategy of retiring older air frames to free up funds to develop new aircraft. “The Air Force must recapitalize its fighters with at least a one-for-one rate [replacing each retired jet with a newly procured tail], while also augmenting its force with collaborative combat aircraft.”

The Mitchell Institute also argues that the Air Force should have a bomber force of at least 300 aircraft. With 76 Cold War-era B-52 Stratofortresses in the Air Force’s fleet and slated for massive upgrades, that would mean the Air Force would have to buy at least 224 B-21s to meet Mitchell’s goal. The Air Force is planning to retire all B-1s and B-2s in the next decade and fly a two-bomber fleet.

Kratos SRE Inc., a subsidiary of Kratos Defense, and Halo Aeronautics are among the more than two dozen vendors taking part in the first phase of the Defense Department’s Drone Dominance Program, the department said in a statement.

“Drone dominance is a process race as much as a technological race,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a July 2025 memo that the department highlighted. “We are buying what works — fast, at scale, and without bureaucratic delay. Lethality will not be hindered by self-imposed restrictions.”

Hegseth’s memo followed a June 2025 executive order signed by President Donald Trump that spelled out ways for the U.S. to improve its military and commercial drone capabilities, focusing on inexpensive, American-made combat drones.

The evaluation for the first phase, which the DOD dubbed the Gauntlet, will start Feb. 18 at Fort Benning, Georgia, and finish in early March. After military operators fly and evaluate the proposed vendors’ systems, the department will place about $150 million in orders for prototype drones.

Those prototypes will be delivered over the following five months, per the DOD. The department said in an early December release that it planned to have 12 vendors produce a total of 30,000 drones, at $5,000 per unit.

Hegseth’s Drone Dominance Program, which was rolled out in early December with a request for information, aims to quickly and inexpensively acquire hundreds of thousands of one-way attack drones by 2027.

Ukraine has used such “kamikaze” drones extensively in its fight against Russia’s invasion over the last four years, and it has drawn attention to their effectiveness in a modern war.

Hegseth said in December that the military can’t afford to continue to use costly munitions worth millions of dollars apiece to take out inexpensive enemy drones, and that a cheaper arsenal of attack drones is critical.

The Pentagon expects to spend $1.1 billion on the program over its four phases and wants to have “warfighters” be the ones evaluating how well potential drones work.

The department intends to buy large amounts of drones on a regular schedule, which will create a stable demand signal allowing industry to build out its own capacity.

The following three phases will see the number of vendors decline from 12 to 5, the DOD said in December, as the number of drones ordered will grow to 150,000 and the price will drop to $2,300.

The competitive cycles for improving these drones will be “measured in months, not years,” the Pentagon said.

The companies competing in “Gauntlet I” are:

• Anno.Ai Inc.
• Ascent Aerosystems Inc.
• Auterion Government Solutions Inc.
• DZYNE Technologies
• Ewing Aerospace
• Farage Precision
• Firestorm Labs
• General Cherry Corp.
• Greensight Inc.
• Griffon Aerospace Inc.
• Halo Aeronautics
• Kratos SRE
• Modalai Inc.
• Napatree Technology
• Neros Inc.
• Oksi Ventures Inc.
• Paladin Defense Services
• Performance Drone Works
• Responsibly LTD
• Swarm Defense Technologies
• Teal Drones Inc.
• Ukrainian Defense Drones Tech Corp.
• Vector Defense Inc.
• W.S. Darley & Co.
• XTEND Reality Inc.

Lt. Gen. Scott Pleus, the Air Force’s acting vice chief of staff, told attendees at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies conference in Arlington, Virginia, that Air Force Secretary Troy Meink and Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the service’s chief of staff, have made improving readiness a top priority. That includes not just concentrating on flying airplanes, Pleus said, but fixing them so pilots and air crews can generate the sorties they need to project airpower.

In recent years, Pleus said, the Air Force has shifted to a more “centralized” approach to managing readiness. But now, he said, “we are putting commanders in commander business,” and not having staff or headquarters take the lead on readiness.

And if a surprise inspection shows a unit does not pass muster, Pleus said, it’s going to be on their commander.

“This is commanders’ business, and we’re going to hold commanders responsible for that,” Pleus said. “Because that is 100% in their wheelhouse. If they fail an inspection, that is the commander’s fault, and we will hold them accountable as we move forward.”

The Air Force has for years struggled with steadily declining aircraft readiness rates, but efforts to address the problem have yielded little success. Mission-capable rates across the fleet have continued to decline and hit 62% in fiscal 2024; the lowest in recent memory. Meanwhile, the service’s fleet is continually shrinking, and now has fewer than 5,000 aircraft.

Previous administrations emphasized modernizing the fleet, Pleus said, at the expense of readiness of the existing aircraft already on hand. Meink and Wilsbach are taking a different approach, he said, and “are explicitly clear readiness is our focus now.”

“We’ve got to buy parts,” Pleus said. “We’ve got to have the parts available so that … maintenance folks that are out there, wrenching on the flight line each and every day, in the cold, in the rain, in the heat, have the parts they need so they can fix those airplane, and then we can get them airborne again.”

Pleus said the Air Force is not abandoning its modernization drive, but will no longer do so at the cost of readiness. To do that, he said, the service is looking for better ways to use its funding and working with Congress and the Pentagon to ensure it has the maintenance skills and parts needed to ensure more planes are available to fly their missions.

The service is also emphasizing speed in its drive to improve readiness, Pleus said, including swiftly moving on exercises, acquisitions and working with the defense industrial base. Meink has stressed the need to eliminate needless bureaucracy in the acquisition process, for example, Pleus said.

“When you have all the time in the world, you can spend as much time as you want, taking the risk out of everything you do,” Pleus said. “When you don’t have any time, then you have to move at speed, and that is exactly what our secretary has asked us, and the chief has mandated that we are going to start to do.”

Pleus also said the service is emphasizing high standards. That includes everything from dress and appearance standards, which has been a priority of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to the way airmen execute flying tactics and procedures.

“Everything in between is about setting a high standard, and then pushing your team to make sure that they are ready to do that high standard each and every day,” Pleus said.

The June 22 B-2 Spirit bomber-led strikes dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer — which used Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons encased in nearly 26,000 pounds of steel to drive through 200 feet of mountain rock and destroy three deeply buried nuclear facilities — were a success of engineering, intelligence and coordination, Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost, deputy commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies conference in Arlington, Virginia.

But if the Air Force is going to maintain that kind of advantage, Armagost said, it has to ensure its command-and-control networks and communications architectures are able to securely transmit critical instructions and status updates to and from bombers and other aircraft.

“If that [strike] package is not able to … communicate the status of their forces and the ‘go’ from the mission commander, then that is a foul on all of us,” Armagost said during a panel about the Midnight Hammer operation and lessons learned.

Maj. Claire Randolph, chief of weapons and tactics for U.S. Air Forces Central Command, agreed that communications capabilities and intelligence sharing needs to improve during combat operations. But, she cautioned, the Air Force needs to take care that giving combatant commanders a direct pipeline to the cockpits does not lead to them making operational decisions and eroding the authority of air crew commanders.

“Let’s imagine you have a wire direct from the CENTCOM commander to the cockpit of every B-2 or the cockpit of every F-16,” Randolph said. “There’s a liability there to add … decision-making authority without all the awareness. We have to improve our communications capabilities, but we also have to be very careful to bound the authority that ends up touching the cockpit.”

Otherwise, Randolph said, there’s a risk of involving people outside of the aircraft who should not be part of the decision-making process.

While the B-2 — currently the only stealth bomber in the Air Force’s fleet — carried out the strikes, the Air Force plans for its in-development successor, the B-21 Raider, to play a central role in future penetrating strike missions.

Northrop Grumman, the maker of the B-21, has touted it as the world’s first sixth-generation aircraft, in part because of its advanced data-sharing capabilities.

In a conversation on the sidelines of the conference, Armagost said that as the Air Force plans for the future, it’s looking to take advantage of those capabilities as a way to improve command and control and communications.

“It’s definitely how we’re configuring going forward,” Armagost told Defense News when asked about the B-21 and the Air Force’s desire to improve how it communicates in combat.

Armagost said an operation like Midnight Hammer will look different — and in some ways, be easier to carry out — once the Raider is integrated into the Air Force’s fleet.

In a statement to Defense News, an Air Force spokesperson said the service “remains committed to expediting delivery of the VC-25 bridge aircraft in support of the presidential airlift mission,” and the plane is on track to be delivered no later than summer 2026. Breaking Defense first reported the expected delivery plans for the Qatar plane.

The Air Force declined to comment on what changes may have been made to the requirements for the Qatar plane to expedite its delivery as a presidential aircraft.

Boeing has been working on two new VC-25Bs, or Air Force One aircraft, for about a decade to replace the existing pair of aging planes, but has fallen years behind schedule amid supply chain challenges and a lack of properly cleared workers. The planes were originally to be delivered in 2024, but are now likely to come in 2028 or 2029. Boeing is under a $3.9 billion fixed-price contract to modify the airplanes, but has repeatedly taken losses on the program.

President Donald Trump has voiced deep dissatisfaction with the VC-25B delays and criticized Boeing, and, shortly after taking office for a second term, news emerged that the administration was planning to accept a 747-8 donated from Qatar and have it revamped into an Air Force One.

The current Air Force One planes, the VC-25A, have been in service for about 35 years, and are showing their age. Earlier this week, a VC-25A flying Trump and other personnel to the international Davos conference had to return to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland after experiencing an electrical problem.

Reports indicate that the Qatar plane will be used for a few years and then donated to Trump’s presidential library after he leaves office.

The plan drew intense criticism from some observers and congressional Democrats, who raised questions about the ethics of accepting such a massive gift that would end up in a presidential library in a few years. Critics also questioned whether the plane could be properly modified quickly enough to be used, if corners might be cut to speed up the process and whether the effort would be a wise use of money.

Typically, an aircraft specially designated to be Air Force One is upgraded with hardened defenses, countermeasures and encrypted communications to allow a president to survive and direct forces from the air in the event of a war or other major catastrophe.

Air Force Sec. Troy Meink said in a June 2025 Senate hearing that the service would use leftover money from the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, which was not needed in 2024, to pay for the Qatar plane’s revamp. Meink told lawmakers that the effort would cost less than $400 million — not the roughly $1 billion as some had projected — and could be done in less than a year.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., at that time called Meink’s $400 million estimate “wildly rosy,” and said if the plane were to arrive in late 2026, that would not leave much time to get much use out of it before it winds up in the library.

“That doesn’t sound like a great use of my taxpayer dollars,” Murphy said.

Meink said in a House hearing earlier that month that the higher $1 billion cost estimate included things like spare parts and training that have already been covered in the broader VC-25B program.

L3Harris is reportedly working on the Qatar plane’s upgrades, but the company has declined to comment.

In materials released Monday, the House Appropriations Committee said the compromise $839 billion spending bill would provide $3.9 billion for the military’s sixth-generation aircraft. That would include $3 billion for the Air Force’s F-47 fighter, which will be built by Boeing, and $972 million for the Navy’s F/A-XX, the House committee said.

That would be hundreds of millions more than the Pentagon requested in its original proposed 2026 budget last summer, which requested nearly $2.6 billion for the F-47 and just $74 million for the Navy’s F/A-XX.

The F-47, also known as Next Generation Air Dominance, will be an advanced fighter designed to replace the F-22 Raptor. It is intended to fly alongside multiple autonomous drone wingmen, called collaborative combat aircraft, and have advanced stealth capabilities and greater range than the F-22 and F-35.

The spending bill also would prevent the Air Force from canceling its E-7 Wedgetail airborne battle management aircraft program.

While top service leaders had for years stressed the need to acquire the Boeing-made E-7 to replace the aging E-3 Sentry, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed skepticism about the program’s future use in a June 2025 hearing and suggested a space-based system would be better. When the Pentagon’s budget proposal emerged later that month, it called for canceling the E-7, which is already flown by Australia and in the works for other allies.

Congressional appropriators appear to disagree. The House said the spending bill would provide $1.1 billion for the E-7 program.

The spending bill would also be in line with the Pentagon’s proposed reduction in the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters purchased in 2026. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps combined bought 75 F-35s from Lockheed Martin in 2025. But the Pentagon’s proposed budget called for 47 F-35s in all in 2026, including 24 F-35As for the Air Force.

The conferenced defense bill would provide $7.6 billion for 47 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, across those three services. It would also provide $440 million for spare parts for both the F-35 and its engine, the F135.

The Pentagon said last summer that it planned to redirect money that would have gone to buying more F-35s into sustainment of the jets and strengthening its supply base, as well as ensuring its Block 4 upgrades stay on track.

Block 4 upgrades will allow the F-35 to carry more weapons, improve its electronic warfare capabilities and upgrade its sensors, communications and navigation. But the effort is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, and the F-35 program has scaled back its plans for those upgrades to focus on the capabilities that can be delivered in the next five years.

The defense spending bill would boost spending on the EA-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft by $474 million, to buy two more of the planes.

And it would provide $1.9 billion for the B-21 Raider, Northrop Grumman’s sixth-generation stealth bomber.

The spending bill would also provide $27.2 billion for the Navy to build 17 ships, including a Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Virginia-class fast attack subs, three medium landing ships and an anti-submarine warfare ship, the House said. The Senate said the conference bill increases spending on Columbia- and Virginia-class subs by $5.9 billion.

The bill also fully funds the Air Force’s LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program.

The total far surpassed the previous record of 142 F-35s for 2021. It follows two slower years for F-35 deliveries — 98 in 2023 and 110 in 2024 — that were due to the Defense Department decision to stop accepting new F-35s because of problems with Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3, updates. Over that three-year span, Lockheed delivered an average of 133 F-35s each year.

TR-3 upgrades provide better displays, computer memory and processing power. The package’s hardware and software updates were necessary before a more expansive modernization, known as Block 4, could begin.

However, TR-3 suffered numerous delays, and in July 2023, the government stopped accepting deliveries of new F-35s that were meant to have TR-3 installed. That delivery halt lasted a year, and Lockheed stored dozens of brand-new jets at its facilities, primarily in Fort Worth, Texas.

Lockheed Martin and the government focused on getting a partial, or “truncated,” version of TR-3’s software working well enough to lift the delivery halt, which happened in July 2024. The delivery backlog was cleared out in May of last year, Lockheed said.

But the delayed deliveries — as well as the fact that TR-3 could initially only be used for training missions, not combat missions — had ripple effects on the Air Force and other services. Lockheed reportedly said in June 2025 it had delivered the last software update needed to complete TR-3 last year.

Lockheed said that the nearly 1,300 F-35s in operation worldwide have recorded more than 1 million flight hours. The F-35 also played critical roles in combat operations around the world, including suppressing Iran’s air defenses during the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities known as Operation Midnight Hammer.

Also last summer, Dutch F-35s, flying alongside Polish fighters engaged and shot down multiple Russian drones in Poland’s airspace. This marked the first time NATO F-35s engaged threats in allied air space, Lockheed said.