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Lockheed Martin recently invited us to the F-35 factory in Texas to learn more about how they build the world’s premier 5^th gen fighter.

Of course, we took them up on the offer.

Fence in—here’s what we learned!

The Program

If you know anything about the F-35 program, you know it's massive. But on the business side, we were surprised to learn that the incredibly complex stealth fighter program manages an enormous network of 1,650+ suppliers, including 1,000 small businesses.

So far, 17 nations are involved in the program. As of this writing, they plan to buy 3,300+ F-35s.

For context: There were only 195 F-22 Raptors ever built, and for our 4th gen lovers, 1,500+ F-15s and 4,550+ F-16s have been built so far.

Forth Worth

We didn’t visit the plant—we visited a plant. There are actually 3 F-35 plants—in Japan, Italy, and Forth Worth, Texas, US of A.

We visited Fort Worth, the largest F-35 plant, which has a production line 1 mile long!

Officially known as Air Force Plant 4, the facility is owned by the government, not Lockheed Martin. It’s the same arrangement used at the legendary Plant 42 facility in Palmdale, California, for classified aircraft production (and the home of Skunkworks).

The plant and the Fort Worth community have a long history;  over 70,000 aircraft have been built there since the 1940s.

At its peak during WWII, the plant pumped out 175 B-24 bombers per month—yes, per month. 

During the Cold War, the same line (and community) helped produce 30 F-16s per month at its peak in 1987—a jet a day. #mindblown

Building the Jet

It takes a village to build the F-35.

The 3 million ft² facility houses 17,000 employees who work in 3 shifts.

The jet is assembled using 4 main pieces from 3 defense primes: the forward fuselage and wings are from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman creates the mid-fuselage, and the aft fuselage comes from BAE.

There are 200 F-35s on the line at any given time, in various stages of assembly. Speaking of assembly, all F-35s start production sitting vertically on their tail—not flat—to maximize space, ergonomics, and efficiency.

When assembly is complete, 2 robots armed with paint guns precisely spray the stealth coating onto each jet.

Our Impression

We can only show you the section of the production line in the picture above, but one observation that stood out to us isn’t captured in that picture. There are LOTS of tooling, jigs, and machinery that put off a much different vibe than previous production lines.

This is definitely a high-tech setup.

That said, despite the tech and manpower, it still takes 18 months to build an F-35 from start to finish, including long-lead items like engines (12 months if all the parts are on-site). This speaks to the complexities and assembly tolerances of a high-tech fighter aircraft, something that sets the US industrial base apart from China and Russia.

Because of this, the program is forecasted to produce 156 jets per year (13 jets per month) by 2025, with some options to increase capacity from there.

That might not sound like a lot but consider this: At that rate, every 2 months, enough F-35s are built to create a new fighter squadron.

Fun Fact: After the jets are built, they have to get flight tested before they go to the customers. There are so many F-35s at Fort Worth that the post-production flight test section houses enough flyable jets to equip an entire fighter squadron—we counted 18 F-35s in the flight test/acceptance phase during our trip.

Insider Info

Finally, we’ll leave you with 3 F-35 deets you might not be tracking:

• Fuel Tanks: Each F-35 built is already plumbed for external fuel tanks that would increase the jet’s range ~40%, though they have not been developed…yet 😉
• Weapons: Lot 15 jets are on the line now, which unlocks the potential of the Sidekick mod for the F-35A and C, adding 2 extra AIM-120 missiles to the internal weapons bays 😎
• 1K: the 1,000^th F-35 is on the line being built as you read this; we saw it, and it will roll off the line later this year 🥳

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The Air Force has a PANDA. Their newest maintenance program of record will apply AI to data to create condition-based maintenance of aircraft, a dramatic shift from the time-based methods used today. The name of this program: the Predictive Analytics and Decision Assistant (PANDA). If this works and gets implemented at scale, the implications are yuge.

New Zealand—the oft-forgotten 5EYES member—is planning to increase its defense spending $472m over the next 4 years. That equates to a 14% increase in spending, but it's not for equipment; it will be split between better pay and infrastructure. IYDK, New Zealand, has lost ~30% of its active military personnel due to low wages…which are higher than the lowest US military wages.

The Pentagon released a new science and technology (S&T) strategy. The 11-page document is stuffed with the types of platitudes we’ve all come to expect by now, but we’re not picking it apart….yet. The actual plan to execute the strategy won’t be delivered to Congress for another 3 months.

India and Russia cut a deal on the production of Russian military equipment. IYDK, 60% of India’s military equipment is Russian, though there have been several efforts to ween them off of that (and onto US equipment). India’s ‘Make in India’ strategy would require local production of Russian equipment but don’t get too excited. Russia hasn’t even been able to supply India with enough spare parts, let alone spin up new production lines. Oh, then there’s the whole Ukraine war thing. Read the room, India. You’re better than that.

The Air Force’s MC-130 seaplane concept hit choppy waters. The original plan to adapt a conventional MC-130 into a seaplane demo by 2021 never materialized. It got bumped to 2022, then 2023, and now the Air Force is requesting another $15m in 2024 to study designs—not to build it—meaning the soonest it might be a demo is 2026, if ever. A better option the Air Force is looking at now is Japan’s US-2 seaplane, something that was openly suggested years ago in a very rational argument…by a second lieutenant pilot in the Air National Guard. Good ideas have no rank.

• Primordial Labs startup emerged from stealth mode, to debut AI voice control tech to pilot drones AND demoed a voice-operated nano-drone, with plans to add 100 autonomous behaviors this year
• China’s secretive reusable spaceplane completed its second mission, landing after 276 days in orbit, where it conducted proximity and capture maneuvers with subsatellite
• Scale AI announced it’s deploying the first ChatGPT-like generative AI on an Army classified network to bring AI-powered decision-making to military leaders without exposing sensitive data
• BAE is looking to sell $1B of its business to fund the proposed $4.7B Aerojet Rocketdyne acquisition