The F-35 At 20: How Its Successes, And Failures, Shaped The Aerospace Industry

The first operational F-35 is delivered to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on July 14, 2011. (Samuel King Jr./US Air Force)

Editor’s Note 10/26/2026: To mark the 25th anniversary of the F-35, we are re-upping the following piece, which was published to mark the 20th anniversary.

WASHINGTON: On Friday, Oct. 26, 2001, executives and employees from the nation’s two biggest defense primes gathered in boardrooms and sprawling production facilities to watch a Pentagon press conference. At stake: the Joint Strike Fighter competition, which would decide who would dominate the next 40 years of the defense aerospace industry — and rake in hundreds of billions in profits.

It was a moment five years in the making. The Pentagon wanted to buy a single stealth aircraft for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps capable of three distinct operational requirements: conventional landings on a runway, landing on aircraft carriers, and performing short takeoffs and vertical landings.

It awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin and Boeing in 1996 to build competing prototypes, known as the X-35 and X-32. By July 2001, Lockheed’s X-35 had proven it could execute a short, 500-foot takeoff, fly at supersonic speeds and then vertically land in a single flight. While Boeing’s X-32 also demonstrated supersonic flight and vertical landings, it did not accomplish them in the same flight.

For the engineers that had designed and developed the two planes, emotions were running high as a group of white-haired defense acquisition officials approached the podium of the Pentagon press briefing room.

And just like that, the competition was over.

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After a few minutes of opening comments, Air Force Secretary Jim Roche announced the Lockheed proposal “emerged continuously as the clear winner” with “few weaknesses” and a lower level of technical risk.

“Both proposals were very good, both demo programs were very good. But on the basis of strengths, weaknesses, and degrees of risk of the program, it is our conclusion…that the Lockheed Martin team is the winner of the Joint Strike Fighter program on a best value basis.”

At Lockheed’s Martin’s production facilities in Fort Worth, employees watching the press conference erupted into cheers.

“[Roche] got ‘Lock-’ out, and that was the last thing I heard because everybody jumped up and started yelling and clapping,” said Tom Burbage , then the executive vice president of Lockheed’s JSF program.

During the press conference, Edward “Pete” Aldridge — then the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics — characterized the joint strike fighter as a “highly common, lethal, survivable, supportable and affordable next-generation multi-role strike fighter aircraft.”

F-35 development and production was valued at about $200 billion at the time, with at least 3,000 aircraft purchased over the program of record. Roche projected that each aircraft would cost anywhere from $40 million to $50 million depending on the variant, in 2001 dollars (about $62 million to $77 million today). The first production model F-35 would be delivered in 2008, Lockheed stated .

However, for the Pentagon, the dream of the F-35 all too often felt a little like a nightmare.

Technical problems discovered in the early years of development caused ballooning cost growth , ultimately triggering a Nunn-McCurdy breach in 2010 that led to the program being restructured. Lockheed wasn’t able to deliver the first production model F-35 until 2011 . Relations between Lockheed and the Joint Program Office hit a nadir in 2012 before slowly being repaired.

Twenty years after its initial contract award, the Defense Department predicts that it will cost $398 billion to acquire the planned F-35 fleet, with the total lifecycle cost of the program pegged at $1.7 trillion — overruns that have led the F-35 to became the poster example of what current Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall termed “acquisition malpractice” in 2012.

Yet ultimately, Lockheed succeeded in building a fifth-generation aircraft that could be used by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, and has won every international sales competition it has been in. For all the technological problems the aircraft has faced over its development, pilots have been enthusiastic about the benefits its combination of stealth and data fusion bring to the battlefield.

Airman 1st Class Allison Lasher, 33rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron crew chief, marshals Lt. Col. Christine Mau, 33rd Operations Group deputy commander, as she prepares to take off for her first flight on Eglin Air Force Base in 2015. (Staff Sgt. Marleah Robertson/US Air Force)

The Marine Corps was the first to introduce the F-35 in operations in 2015, followed by the Air Force in 2016 and the Navy in 2019. In May 2018, the Israeli air force became the first organization to fly the F-35 in combat, beating the US military to the punch. US Marine Corps F-35Bs conducted its first combat mission in Afghanistan later that year, and the Air Force F-35As later spent 16 months deployed to the Middle East.

And though sustainment costs remain a threat to the program’s health, the cost of producing the most widely used variant, the F-35A, has fallen to about $78 million per copy — short of the Pentagon’s goal, but still on par with a high-end fourth generation fighter.

“The idea of combining a conventional takeoff, carrier based and a short takeoff vertical landing plane, all in one airframe, looked daft from the start and should have failed. But it didn’t because of tens of billions of dollars pumped into it,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst for the Teal Group.

The takeaway from the last 20 years, he noted, might well be “You succeeded, but please don’t try that again.”

In 2001, the loss seemed existential for Boeing.

“We were all crushed,” said Todd Blecher, a former Boeing spokesman who was assigned to the JSF program and watched the Oct. 26 announcement from the company’s combat aircraft production facilities in St. Louis, Mo.

The company had planned for Mike Heinz, Boeing’s deputy program manager for the X-32, to brief local media in St. Louis, accompanied by a handful of engineers, after the contract announcement was made, Blecher said. While Boeing’s communications team urged the other employees to allow Heinz to speak to the media alone, they declined the reprieve.

The Boeing X-32A being towed to a restoration building at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force on Nov. 20, 2016. (Ken LaRock/US Air Force)

“All those employees, who we had prepared to come out and celebrate in front of the local media, now … had to answer, repeatedly, that question of how does it feel [to lose],” he said. “They were crying in their team jackets and everything. It was a very sullen, solemn atmosphere, but God bless them, they did it.”

Much of the media coverage in the immediate aftermath of the JSF contract announcement centered on the department’s “winner takes all” acquisition strategy, which left Boeing completely cut out of the program.

“The two teams formed under the assumption that they were out to win the contract. They worked very very hard, they put a tremendous amount of investment into their team activities,” Aldridge said during the press conference. “It would seem to be somewhat unfair to tell the winner, you must now absorb the loser after you’ve formed your team.”

Boeing was facing 30,000 layoffs in its commercial division, The New York Times reported at the time, and congressional backers raised concerns about whether the company would be able to retain its ability to manufacture fighter jets after the Navy finished F/A-18E/F Super Hornet procurement in the early 2010s — or whether it would survive the decision at all.

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Analysts at the time predicted that Boeing might be able to recoup the loss because of ongoing work on armed unmanned systems, which they projected would become a massive business. However — aside from support of the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator and its successor, the MQ-9 Reaper — programs of record for combat drones never materialized.

With so many fighters set to be replaced by a single aircraft type, the underlying message to industry was, “Well, would you like a Last Fighter to go with your Last Supper ?” Aboulafia said, referring to a 1993 event where Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Perry invited defense CEOs to dinner and instructed them to merge their businesses.

The JSF was conceptualized before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to a hike in defense budgets, and before China emerged as a major military power. Aboulafia described the atmosphere as “a vaguely apocalyptic post-Cold War defense contracting environment” where contractors were concerned about dwindling defense spending and consolidation.

Some 20 years later, Lockheed’s F-35 has secured a formidable number of international sales, adding Belgium, Singapore, Poland and Switzerland to its list of customers over the past few years. The Pentagon remains committed, at least on paper, to a planned buy of 2,456 F-35s.

However, fears that the F-35 would become the Last Fighter have not borne out. There continues to be a healthy market for fourth-generation aircraft. France’s Dassault Rafale and Saab’s Gripen E continue to nab international orders, while the US Navy never stopped buying Boeing’s Super Hornet. The US Air Force itself in 2020 placed an order for the new F-15EX variant, denying Lockheed total control of the fighter market.

If anything, the F-35s long development timeline has taken its toll on the program itself. Although none of the US services have formally reduced their planned buy, the Air Force is now considering whether it should buy fewer F-35s and replace a portion of its F-16 fleet with a lower cost fourth-generation fighter . Meanwhile, the Marine Corps is evaluating changes to its fighter squadrons that could result in the service buying 54 fewer F-35Bs.

“[The JSF contract] obviously gave Lockheed Martin unquestioned global dominance of the fighter market. But it certainly didn’t hand them a monopoly either at home or abroad,” Aboulafia said.

“Anyone that thought, 20 years later, the F-15 and F/A-18E/F would still be in full production and [that Boeing would] have successfully bid on new military aircraft, I don’t think anyone would have believed you.”

Some analysts predicted that the JSF award would lead to additional mergers among the Pentagon’s major aircraft suppliers, but its three major aerospace companies — Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman — remain among the most powerful and lucrative defense primes.

While consolidation in the defense industry has continued — among notable moves are Raytheon absorbing United Technologies Corp, Northrop’s purchase of Orbital ATK, and Lockheed currently angling to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne — the F-35 program cannot be seen as a root cause, said Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners.

However, it could also be argued that the Defense Department has had to manage the industrial base differently simply because it didn’t want to lose Boeing as a fighter manufacturer, said Roman Schweizer, a defense analyst with Cowen Research .

“Was it an industrial base decision” to award programs like the Air Force’s T-X training jet competition to Boeing, thus “making sure that engineers and production workers across the industry have programs to be working on?” Schweizer asked. When it came to awarding new-start programs, “it seems like there’s been thoughtful decisions about what the industrial impact is.”

“It’s a complex equation,” Schweizer said. “There’s a lot of right answers, and unfortunately there’s a lot of wrong answers, too.”

Learn Your Lessons Well

Although the Joint Strike Fighter contract award may have not resulted in the complete upheaval of the defense aerospace industry, analysts said its impact has rippled through the world of defense contracting — and that the lessons may reverberate years after F-35 procurement comes to a close.

Perhaps the most obvious lesson from the program, analysts agreed, is to forgo joint programs for major weapons systems, reducing the program’s complexity by having fewer competing requirements.

In the future, “you’re probably going to see requirements and acquisition strategies for big programs that aren’t so ambitious from a jointness perspective … and also acquisition strategies that don’t have such long term industrial repercussions,” Schweizer said.

One example is the Navy and Air Forces sixth-generation fighter programs. Although both are named “Next Generation Air Dominance,” the efforts are not related.

Software is another area the JSF program has left its mark, said Bill Greenwalt, who worked as deputy defense undersecretary for industrial policy during the later years of the Bush administration.

The F-35 was the first fighter where software was a major feature of the aircraft, with more than 8 million lines of code that allowed it to fuse data and imagery across its different sensor suites and share it with other F-35s flying in formation.

Two U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II’s assigned to the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 211, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, fly a combat mission over Afghanistan, Sept. 27, 2018. (Staff Sgt. Corey Hook/US Air Force)

The Pentagon recognizes that it must be able to update the F-35 and future aircraft with new batches of software code, even if it has struggled to match the pace seen in the commercial world. Future fighters will likely be designed with even more of a focus on software development, Greenwalt said.

“These are flying pieces of software, and the ability in the contracting world to bring in new software developers — there is an entirely new industrial base that’s available now,” he said.

The industrial fallout of the “winner takes all” contract decision — combined with the F-35’s cost overruns and schedule delays — could also prompt the Pentagon to prioritize ongoing competition throughout the lifecycle of a future fighter, analysts said.

“With another future program of this size, do they really want to be sole-source?” Callan asked, adding that Lockheed’s control over the F-35 technical data has made it difficult for the department to outsource elements of the program where Lockheed has not performed.

“People are going to think very differently about the information systems architecture. A future platform is going to be an open architecture,” he said. “The other part is, DoD is going to want to have more control over data rights and own the technical baseline so they can compete” aspects of the program throughout its lifecycle.

Greenwalt argued that the Pentagon should have continued prototyping aircraft with both vendors until the design was production-ready, keeping Boeing and Lockheed in a “tight competition” and allowing both to iterate on fighter jet designs.

Legislation that granted the department more flexibility to acquire systems through serial prototyping —such as section 804 mid-tier acquisition authorities — could be seen as Congress’ effort to ensure more competition continues throughout technology development, he said. However, it remains to be seen whether the department fully embraces these new tools, or whether Congress will continue to reform the acquisition process to allow the Pentagon to change course when technologies fail.

“One of the biggest reasons why we’re going to lose to China is the inability to have flexible budgeting to compete when things don’t go the way they’re predicted,” Greenwalt said. “And guess what? They never go the way they’re predicted.”

Twenty years after its initial contract award —and even as F-35 production numbers more than a hundred planes per year — the Joint Strike Fighter program technically still remains in development due to delays in finishing up operational testing .

An F-35B jump jet practices vertical landing at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma.

The Pentagon planned to issue a “Milestone C” declaration to begin full-rate production in 2019, but as of an Oct. 13 meeting of the defense acquisition board, a revised schedule for the milestone has not been approved.

This long timeline, Greenwalt said, is a paradigm the Defense Department cannot afford to repeat if it wants to compete with the rapid technological advances of China.

“The Chinese are deploying capabilities, whether it’s missile capabilities, or aircraft capabilities…. in two to four year increments,” Greenwalt said. “In the future, we can’t develop an aircraft like this that takes 25 years to develop.”

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2011年7月14日，首架投入作战使用的F-35战斗机交付佛罗里达州埃格林空军基地。（Samuel King Jr./美国空军）

编者按 2026 年 10 月 26 日：为纪念 F-35 诞生 25 周年，我们重新发布以下文章，该文章最初发表于纪念其诞生 20 周年之际。

华盛顿：2001年10月26日，星期五，美国两大国防制造商的高管和员工齐聚会议室和庞大的生产设施，观看五角大楼举行的新闻发布会。此次发布会至关重要：联合攻击战斗机竞标将决定未来40年国防航空航天工业的主导权，以及数千亿美元的利润。

这是酝酿了五年的时刻。五角大楼希望为空军、海军和海军陆战队采购一种隐形飞机，能够满足三种不同的作战需求：在跑道上进行常规着陆、在航空母舰上着陆以及执行短距起飞和垂直着陆。

1996年，美国宇航局分别与洛克希德·马丁公司和波音公司签订合同，建造两款竞争性的原型机，即X-35和X-32。到2001年7月，洛克希德·马丁公司的X-35已经证明，它能够在一次飞行中完成500英尺（约150米）的短距起飞、超音速飞行和垂直降落。而波音公司的X-32也展示了超音速飞行和垂直降落，但未能在同一次飞行中完成。

对于设计和开发这两架飞机的工程师来说，当一群白发苍苍的国防采购官员走向五角大楼新闻发布室的讲台时，他们的情绪非常激动。

比赛就这样结束了。

生物防御就是部队防护：今日做好准备，明日应对。

一位功勋卓著的战斗机飞行员兼生物技术公司首席执行官倡导在下一次危机到来之前，为应对新型病毒威胁做好准备。

在几分钟的开场白之后，空军部长吉姆·罗奇宣布，洛克希德公司的方案“不断脱颖而出，成为明显的赢家”，该方案“几乎没有弱点”，技术风险也较低。

“两个方案都非常出色，两个演示项目也都非常出色。但基于项目的优势、劣势和风险程度，我们的结论是……洛克希德·马丁团队凭借其最佳性价比赢得了联合攻击战斗机项目。”

在洛克希德·马丁公司位于沃斯堡的生产设施内，观看新闻发布会的员工们爆发出欢呼声。

“（罗氏）把‘锁定’这个词说了出来，那是我听到的最后一句话，因为大家都跳起来开始大喊大叫、鼓掌，”当时担任洛克希德JSF项目执行副总裁的汤姆·伯巴奇说道。

在新闻发布会上，时任五角大楼负责采购、技术和后勤的国防部副部长爱德华·“皮特”·奥尔德里奇将联合攻击战斗机描述为“一种高度通用、致命、生存能力强、易于维护且价格合理的下一代多用途攻击战斗机”。

当时，F-35的研发和生产总值约为2000亿美元，据记录，该项目至少采购了3000架飞机。罗氏公司预测，每架飞机的成本根据型号不同，在4000万美元到5000万美元之间（以2001年美元计，相当于今天的6200万美元到7700万美元）。洛克希德公司表示，首架量产型F-35将于2008年交付。

然而，对于五角大楼来说，F-35 的梦想常常感觉像是一场噩梦。

早期研发阶段发现的技术问题导致成本飙升，最终在2010年引发了违反《纳恩-麦克柯迪协议》的行为，导致该项目重组。洛克希德公司直到2011年才交付首架F-35生产型战机。2012年，洛克希德公司与联合项目办公室的关系跌至谷底，之后才逐渐修复。

在最初合同授予 20 年后，国防部预测，采购计划中的 F-35 机队将耗资 3980 亿美元，该项目的整个生命周期成本将达到 1.7 万亿美元——超支导致 F-35 成为现任空军部长弗兰克·肯德尔在 2012 年所称的“采购失当”的典型例子。

然而，洛克希德公司最终成功研制出一款可供空军、海军和海军陆战队使用的第五代战机，并在所有参与的国际销售竞标中胜出。尽管该战机在研发过程中面临诸多技术难题，但飞行员们对其隐身性能和数据融合技术相结合所带来的战场优势赞不绝口。

2015年，在埃格林空军基地，第33飞机维修中队机组长艾莉森·拉舍尔一等兵引导第33作战大队副指挥官克里斯汀·莫中校准备起飞，进行她的首次飞行。（美国空军参谋军士玛莉亚·罗伯逊摄）

美国海军陆战队于2015年率先将F-35投入作战使用，随后空军于2016年、海军于2019年也相继列装。2018年5月，以色列空军抢先美国军方，成为首个将F-35投入实战的军种。同年晚些时候，美国海军陆战队的F-35B在阿富汗执行了首次作战任务，而空军的F-35A随后在中东地区部署了16个月。

尽管维护成本仍然是对该项目健康的威胁，但最广泛使用的型号 F-35A 的生产成本已降至每架约 7800 万美元——虽然低于五角大楼的目标，但仍然与高端第四代战斗机相当。

“将常规起飞、舰载和短距起飞/垂直降落飞机的功能全部结合在一个机身里的想法，从一开始就显得很愚蠢，本应失败。但它没有失败，是因为投入了数百亿美元，”蒂尔集团的航空航天分析师理查德·阿布拉菲亚说道。

他指出，过去 20 年的经验教训很可能是“你们成功了，但请不要再尝试了”。

2001年，这场亏损对波音公司来说似乎是生死攸关的。

“我们都感到无比沮丧，”曾任波音公司发言人的托德·布莱彻说道。他当时负责JSF项目，并在10月26日于该公司位于密苏里州圣路易斯的战斗机生产设施中观看了发布会。

布莱彻表示，公司原计划在合同公布后，安排波音X-32项目副经理迈克·海因茨携几名工程师在圣路易斯向当地媒体进行简报。尽管波音的公关团队力劝其他员工让海因茨单独与媒体见面，但他们拒绝了这一请求。

2016年11月20日，波音X-32A被拖往美国空军国家博物馆的修复大楼。（肯·拉罗克/美国空军）

“我们原本安排所有员工出来和当地媒体一起庆祝，现在……他们却不得不一遍又一遍地回答‘输球是什么感觉’这个问题，”他说。“他们穿着队服，都哭了。气氛非常沉重、肃穆，但上帝保佑他们，他们做到了。”

JSF 合同宣布后，媒体的报道大多集中在国防部的“赢者通吃”采购策略上，该策略将波音公司完全排除在项目之外。

“两支队伍组建的初衷都是为了赢得这份合同。他们非常努力，在团队活动上投入了大量资金，”奥尔德里奇在新闻发布会上说。“如果让获胜者在组建好自己的队伍后，还要吸收失败者，这似乎有点不公平。”

据《纽约时报》当时报道，波音公司商业部门面临 3 万人的裁员，国会支持者担心，在海军于 2010 年代初完成 F/A-18E/F 超级大黄蜂战斗机的采购后，该公司是否还能保持制造战斗机的能力，或者它是否能够挺过这一决定。

相关报道：F-35发动机竞争对手准备再次交锋

当时的分析人士预测，波音公司或许能够弥补损失，因为其正在研发的武装无人系统将成为一项庞大的业务。然而，除了支持通用原子公司的MQ-1“捕食者”及其后续机型MQ-9“死神”之外，其他任何正式的作战无人机项目都未能实现。

阿布拉菲亚说，由于许多战斗机将被单一机型取代，这向业界传递的潜在信息是：“那么，你们想在最后的晚餐前再来一架最后的战斗机吗？”他指的是1993年的一次活动，当时国防部副部长比尔·佩里邀请国防部门的首席执行官们共进晚餐，并指示他们合并各自的公司。

联合攻击战斗机（JSF）的构想是在阿富汗和伊拉克战争导致国防预算大幅增长之前，以及中国崛起为主要军事强国之前提出的。阿布拉菲亚将当时的氛围描述为“一种略带末日气息的后冷战时期国防承包环境”，承包商们担忧国防开支缩减和行业整合。

大约20年后，洛克希德·马丁公司的F-35战斗机已斩获大量国际订单，并在过去几年中新增了比利时、新加坡、波兰和瑞士等客户。五角大楼至少在纸面上仍然坚持采购2456架F-35战斗机的计划。

然而，F-35 将成为“最后一款战斗机”的担忧并未成为现实。第四代战斗机市场依然强劲。法国达索的“阵风”和萨博的“鹰狮”E 持续斩获国际订单，而美国海军也从未停止采购波音的“超级大黄蜂”。美国空军在 2020 年也订购了新型 F-15EX，打破了洛克希德·马丁公司对战斗机市场的垄断。

F-35漫长的研发周期对项目本身造成了影响。尽管美国各军种尚未正式削减采购计划，但空军目前正在考虑是否应该减少F-35的采购数量，并用成本更低的第四代战斗机替换部分F-16机队。与此同时，海军陆战队正在评估对其战斗机中队的调整方案，该方案可能导致海军陆战队减少采购54架F-35B战斗机。

阿布拉菲亚说：“（JSF合同）显然使洛克希德·马丁公司在全球战斗机市场拥有无可争议的主导地位。但这当然没有赋予他们在国内或国外垄断地位。”

“如果有人认为，20年后F-15和F/A-18E/F仍将全面生产，并且波音公司能够成功竞标新的军用飞机，我想没有人会相信你。”

一些分析人士预测，JSF 的授予将导致五角大楼主要飞机供应商之间出现更多合并，但其三大航空航天公司——洛克希德、波音和诺斯罗普·格鲁曼——仍然是最强大、最赚钱的国防承包商之一。

Capital Alpha Partners 的分析师 Byron Callan 表示，尽管国防工业的整合仍在继续——其中值得注意的举措包括雷神公司收购联合技术公司、诺斯罗普公司收购轨道ATK公司以及洛克希德公司目前正在寻求收购航空喷气火箭公司——但F-35项目不能被视为根本原因。

考恩研究公司的国防分析师罗曼·施韦泽表示，也可以认为国防部不得不以不同的方式管理工业基础，仅仅是因为它不想失去波音公司这家战斗机制造商。

施韦泽问道：“将空军TX教练机竞标等项目授予波音公司，是否出于产业基础的考虑，从而确保整个行业的工程师和生产工人都有项目可做？” 他还表示，在授予新启动项目时，“似乎已经对项目的产业影响进行了深思熟虑的决策。”

“这是一个复杂的等式，”施韦泽说。“有很多正确答案，但不幸的是，也有很多错误答案。”

好好吸取教训

尽管联合攻击战斗机合同的授予可能并未导致国防航空航天业的彻底变革，但分析人士表示，其影响已波及整个国防承包领域——而且，即使 F-35 采购结束多年，其中的教训也可能持续产生影响。

分析人士一致认为，该项目最明显的教训或许是放弃大型武器系统的联合项目，从而减少相互竞争的需求，降低项目的复杂性。

施韦泽表示，未来“你可能会看到大型项目的需求和采购策略，这些项目从联合性角度来看并不那么雄心勃勃……而且采购策略也不会产生如此长期的工业影响”。

例如，海军和空军的第六代战斗机项目就是一个例子。虽然两者都名为“下一代空中优势”，但这两项计划并无关联。

曾在布什政府后期担任国防部工业政策副部长的比尔·格林沃尔特表示，软件是 JSF 项目留下印记的另一个领域。

F-35 是第一款将软件作为飞机主要特征的战斗机，其超过 800 万行代码使其能够融合来自不同传感器套件的数据和图像，并与其他编队飞行的 F-35 共享。

2018年9月27日，隶属于美国海军陆战队第13远征部队第211战斗攻击中队的两架美国海军陆战队F-35B“闪电II”战斗机在阿富汗上空执行作战任务。（美国空军参谋军士科里·胡克摄）

五角大楼认识到，即使软件开发速度一直难以赶上商业领域的步伐，也必须能够用新批次的软件代码更新F-35和未来的战机。格林沃尔特表示，未来的战斗机在设计时可能会更加注重软件开发。

“这些都是飞行软件，而且承包领域有能力引进新的软件开发人员——现在出现了一个全新的产业基础，”他说。

分析人士表示，“赢家通吃”合同决定的产业影响，再加上 F-35 的成本超支和进度延误，也可能促使五角大楼在未来战斗机的整个生命周期中优先考虑持续竞争。

“如果未来还有如此规模的项目，他们真的想成为唯一供应商吗？”卡兰问道，并补充说，洛克希德公司对F-35技术数据的控制使得国防部很难将洛克希德公司没有参与的项目部分外包出去。

“人们对信息系统架构的看法将会发生很大的变化。未来的平台将会是开放式架构，”他说道。“另一方面，国防部希望对数据权利拥有更多控制权，并掌握技术基线，以便在项目整个生命周期内参与竞争。”

格林沃尔特认为，五角大楼应该继续与这两家供应商合作进行飞机原型测试，直到设计达到量产标准，使波音和洛克希德保持“激烈的竞争”，并允许双方对战斗机设计进行迭代。

他表示，赋予国防部更大灵活性，使其能够通过系列原型开发方式采购系统的立法——例如第804条中级采购授权——可以被视为国会为确保技术开发过程中持续存在更多竞争而做出的努力。然而，国防部是否会全面采用这些新工具，以及国会是否会继续改革采购流程，允许五角大楼在技术失败时调整方向，仍有待观察。

格林沃尔特说：“我们输给中国的最大原因之一是缺乏灵活的预算，无法在事态发展不如预期时进行有效应对。而且你猜怎么着？事态发展从来不会如预期那样。”

在最初合同授予二十年后——即使 F-35 的年产量超过一百架——由于作战测试完成的延误，联合攻击战斗机项目在技术上仍处于开发阶段。

一架F-35B垂直起降战斗机在尤马海军陆战队航空站进行垂直着陆训练。

五角大楼计划在 2019 年发布“里程碑 C”声明，开始全面生产，但截至 10 月 13 日国防采购委员会会议，该里程碑的修订时间表尚未获得批准。

格林沃尔特表示，如果国防部想要与中国快速的技术进步竞争，就不能再重蹈覆辙，走上这条漫长的征程。

格林沃尔特说：“中国正在以两到四年为单位部署各种能力，无论是导弹能力还是飞机能力。未来，我们不可能再研发出像这种需要25年才能研发出来的飞机了。”

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