Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) has been awarded a $1,808,545,655 contract for continued design maturation and development of Block 4 capabilities in support of the F-35 Lightning II Phase 2.3 Pre-Modernization for the United States Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps; and foreign customers.
Work is expected to be completed in August 2026. This contract combines purchases for the Air Force ($732,460,990; 40.50 percent); Navy ($371,475,278; 20.54 percent), Marine Corps ($345,974,784; 19.13 percent) and foreign customers ($358,634,603; 19.83 percent), a US DoD release said.
Though Block 4 capabilities have not been officially revealed, media report say it will include addition of or a fix to over 50 capabilities such as major performance upgrades and new weapons integration.
The F-35’s APG-81 AESA radar will be equipped with a wide-area Synthetic Aperture mode to scan large swaths of terrain and track even small objects such as moving vehicles. It will then create a high-definition image and beam it to ground control for intelligence, navigation and weapons targeting.
Potential new weapons include the B-61 nuclear bomb, Small Diameter Bomb II, the JSOW-C and the AIM-9X Block II air-to-air missile and weapons integrated for European F-35 operators such as the Meteor missile made by MBDA. In addition, BAE Systems has been contracted to provide the ASQ-239 electronic warfare suite, which combines a 360 degree electromagnetic sensor to detect nearby threats with infrared and radar countermeasures.
