Jeg vet ingen ting om- eller når Norge får TR-3 oppdatering som danskene venter på. Oppdateringen er tidligere omtalt her på bloggen. (Red.)
US-Based Danish F-35s Going Home Because of Delivery Delays
U.S. Air Force, Royal Danish Air Force, and Royal Netherlands Air Force F-35A Lightning II fighter jets assigned to the 308th Fighter Squadron, Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., fly in formation, May 5, 2021, over Bagdad, Ariz. The flight marked the first training sortie featuring a Danish pilot flying a Denmark-owned F-35. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Dominic Tyler.
July 1, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak
Due to the
prolonged delay in deliveries of the Tech Refresh 3 version of the F-35
fighter, Denmark is pulling six of its TR-2-configured F-35 jets stationed in
the U.S. back to home base in order to consolidate aircraft and get better
training for its pilots and maintainers, the Danish defense ministry announced.
Danish
defense minister Troels Lund Poulsen
said the move “makes
it possible to increase the training level” of F-35 ground and flight crews.
The aircraft will join four already in Denmark, at Skydstrup air base, for a
total of 10. Poulsen also said Denmark has NATO obligations which must be met.
The Royal
Danish Air Force aircraft have been based at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., which
is the centralized training location for all international users of the F-35A.
The ministry said it is making the change because it needs to keep on track
with training for its F-35 fleet, especially since it has promised some of its retiring F-16s to Ukraine.
Poulsen said
the jets will be replaced at Luke by new TR-3 models as soon as they become
available.
“We have now
found a solution so that the delays from the manufacturer affect us as little
as possible,” Poulsen said. He did not specify a timeline for the move.
He added
that it is “absolutely crucial that we follow the phase-in” of the F-35 closely
because the system is “a major investment for Denmark which will affect our
defense and security for many years to come.”
The action
comes as the Joint Program Office gets ready to approve deliveries of F-35s—on
hold since last summer—with a “truncated” version of the TR-3 hardware and software package. The JPO is expected to
inform Congress in the coming weeks that
the truncated package is deemed safe for training. Program Executive Officer
Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt has been waiting for the test enterprise to certify
that the package is stable and doesn’t require an excessive number of in-flight
reboots.
Certifying
the package will allow Lockheed Martin to resume deliveries of some 85 aircraft
that have been parked in storage since last summer.
Once
deliveries are underway, it could take as much as a year to get through the
handover process for the jets, which amount to more than six months’
production. Lockheed has said it expects to deliver at least one per day once
transfers resume, but the Government Accountability Office recently said it has never previously hit that pace.
Denmark has
agreed to sell 24 of its 43 F-16A/B aircraft to Argentina, with the remainder
going to Ukraine. The first aircraft have already been delivered to Argentina,
and NATO officials have said Ukraine will get its first F-16s in the next few
months, pending the completion of pilot and maintainer training, some of which
is taking place in the U.S.
Denmark
plans a force of 27 F-35s. The remaining 17 aircraft are to be delivered by
2027.
The hold on
deliveries has affected all users of the F-35, and its duration—now in its 10th
month—has disrupted the change-out of old equipment for new and the assignment
of personnel in most user countries.
The TR-3
upgrade is the processor and software foundation for the Block 4 upgrade, a
series of more than 80 improvements to electronic warfare, processor power,
displays and weapons, to name just a few. Schmidt told Congress during budget
hearings in the spring that the Block 4 will have to be “reimagined,” with some
updates now not coming until the early 2030s.
The F-35
training enterprise at Luke generates aircraft from an international pool.
Student pilots are given the next jet available, so F-35s are routinely flown
by pilots whose countries don’t own the jets they’re flying. It isn’t yet clear
how the absence of six Danish jets from the pool will affect the training
enterprise.
Lockheed
received a $1.56 billion F-35 contract from the Pentagon on June 27, but
program officials said this had to do exclusively with sustainment efforts of
fielded aircraft and did not include any progress payments having to do with
development or aircraft deliveries.
The contract
covered ground maintenance activities, depot support, the automatic logistic
information system (ALIS) operations, reliability and maintainability
activities, supply chain management and pilot training, among other items. Some
$405 million of the award covers Air Force operations and $124 million covers
Foreign Military Sales support to non-U.S. user nations.
