Page 58 - Australian Defence Magazine Feb-Mar 2023

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AIRPOWER
F-35A LIGHTNING II
FEBRUARY-MARCH 2023 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
NIGEL PITTAWAY
The F135 engine is also the subject of an Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) program, which in December 2023 re- ceived US$75 million of extra funding, with the goal of fielding the enhanced powerplant in 2028.
But it is what is coming next, which has been the focus of F-35 partner countries – including Australia – under the Tech Refresh 3 (TR3) and Block 4 upgrade programs. These new capabilities will be incrementally rolled out with TR3 featured in new aircraft, beginning with Block 15 production in 2023.
The TR3 upgrade will add a new core processor, a pan- oramic cockpit display and an Enhanced Memory Unit (EMU).
“It will be an incredibly upgraded computing infrastruc- ture that will now allow us to pull more software into the jet,” Steve Over explained. “We’re also breaking in the next generation DAS at the same point and the significantly en- hanced EW system that will add Band 2 and Band 5 ca- pability – I won’t go into the frequency spectrum because that’s classified, but think lower and upper ends of the spectrum.”
While TR3 will provide the ‘backbone’ for the Block 4 configuration, the latter will be an incremental series of enhancements to the F-35’s maintenance and logistics sys- tem, operability, pilot vehicle interface, survivability, mis- sion planning, sensors and sensor fusion, training system and weapons capability.
The weapons capability enhancements will see the inte- gration of a new internal weapons carriage configuration, which will permit the internal air to air missile load to in- crease from four to six weapons. Today, the F-35 carries one missile on a weapons bay door and one on the upper bulkhead of each bay, but in the future it will have a tra- peze-like missile carrier which will permit two missiles to be mounted on the upper bulkhead and one on the weap- ons bay door.
Lockheed Martin plans to once again showcase its Aus- tralian suppliers in its Supplier Expo at the Avalon Air Show in March.
ONGOING CAPABILITY UPGRADES
The F-35 has been the subject of capability enhance- ments to date; for example, the replacement of the Northrop Grumman AAQ-37 Distributed Aperture System (DAS) with a system manufactured by Raytheon from 2023, and the award to BAE Systems in December 2021 of a US$493 contract modification to “significantly upgrade and moder- nise” the ASQ-29 Electronic Warfare (EW) system.
“The current DAS is a great system and the F-35 is the only airplane in the world to have a sensor like it,” ex- plained Lockheed Martin’s Steve Over. “But the levels of technology that are in it are 15-20 years old now and it is one of the items on the airplane with the highest failure rate. The new system that is coming on the airplane [from 2023] is 60 per cent of the price of the current system and is five times more reliable.”
RIGHT: The RAAF now has two operational F-35A fighter squadrons and the third is now in the transition process
ABOVE: Australian industry has now been awarded more than $3 billion of production contracts for the F-35 program
NIGEL PITTAWAY