Lockheed Martin Assembled One F-35 Every 46 Hours Last Year- Here is Why That Should Scare (and Comfort) You
It is almost ridiculous to see a stealth fighter jet roll out of an assembly line at a pace that is faster than many car dealerships can move merchandise. That is just what took place in Texas during 2025. Lockheed Martin also completed 191 F-35 Lightning IIs, almost fifty more than they had accomplished previous before, providing them with a record. Maths: one 80 million warplane to a customer every 46 hours.
As we were doom-scrolling through the headlines on supply chain disruptions and manufacturing slowdowns, one factory in Fort Worth seemingly was never informed about the memo. And the consequences of this production spurt are much more than corporate calls on earnings. We are witnessing the world military equilibrium go global jet by jet.
The F-35 is currently surpassing all other allied fighters in terms of production. Combined.
And this is where it really becomes shocking. In 2025, Dassault will deliver 26 Rafales. The Eurofighter Typhoon consortium was running approximately 12. Saab shipped around 17 Gripens. Even the United Aircraft Corporation in Russia, which was under the pressure that it has to produce more in wartime, merely launched an odd 14 to 21 Su-35s (they are secretive about the exact numbers, releasing them in rough batches).
Add all of those together. You obtain a minimum of 70 and up to 80 aircraft.
Lockheed built 191.
It is not a slight superiority–it is not even of the same industrial category. The firm boasts that the manufacture of the F-35 is five times faster than any other combatant fighter in production by the allied partners. This is likely to be either reassuring or disturbing, depending on your attachment to the American foreign policy. The mere asymmetry of production is however geopolitically significant. Those allies who have been waiting years to receive their Rafale deliveries can receive F-35s in months. Countries balancing their choices are having to consider a very easy arithmetic; either we get a fighter this decade or next.
Almost half of all F-35s are being assembled in other countries other than America.
The American fighter jet is rather a globalized supply chain in American marking. F-35s are produced in one of three continents, and then assembled in Texas, with 30 to 42 percent of the total being produced beyond the United States. Japan manufactures center fuselage. Italy produces wings. The UK is the one that manages components such as components as fuel systems and ejection seats. Turkey was also producing parts (until it was kicked off the program due to purchasing Russian air defense systems a saga which had spawned its own geopolitical soap opera).
This decentralized form of manufacturing is not an accident. It became embedded in F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program since its beginning. There were nine countries, which originally collaborated on development, and the spreading production across the borders served various purposes: it burden-shared the expenses of R&D, created political constituencies of allied countries, and introduced the economic incentives, according to which partner countries can hardly give up on the program even when the delays and cost overruns reach their climax.
The downside? Complexity. Once a part shortage occurs in a plant in northern Italy, it is experienced in Fort Worth in weeks. However, the positive has turned out to be even stronger: 20 countries have procured or are currently flying F-35s, which connects the Western air forces so closely that they cannot be easily interchangeable with other air fleets, something past fighter programs never accomplished.
F-35 Aircraft: More of the F-35s are flying today than all of the other fifth-generation fighters together.
List all F-22 Raptor aircraft in operation in the U.S. Air Force. Mark with Russia having some few Su-57s (less than twenty, according to most estimates, and poorly maintained). Add the J-20 fleet of China which the West estimates at approximately 200 aircraft with their newer fleet of J-35 carrier fighters only starting to be produced.
Drastically increase that number to the F-35 fleet: over 1,300 jets have already been delivered, and more than 12 countries are already flying them.
The numerical superiority is imperial. But it is also a strategic American decision that was made many decades ago. The F-22 was intended as a no-compromise air superiority platform–and was limited to 187 aircraft because of cost reasons–the F-35 was focused on being exportable, and on industrial scale. This has been a subject of criticism claiming that this was an acceptance of design compromises. A generalist which is not an expert in anything. However, the figures of production produce a different story of actual military power in the world. One thousand three hundred good enough stealth fighters spread among other nations is as significant as 187 elegant ones in the American hangars. This is further supported by the fact that the F-35 has hit the one-million flight hour mark, which was also attained in 2025. Experience in operations is built up. Maintenance processes mature. Logistics chains are put to the test. There is a quality of quantity.
The Software Was the Hard Part–and They Cracked the Hard Part at Last.
Airframes and engines were not the largest bane of the F-35 over the years. The program was devoured by the software. Technology refresh 3 or TR-3 was a project that was to provide an upgrade of the computing architecture of the jet and facilitate the use of new weapons. Rather it turned out to be a nightmare of missed deliveries and jets in storage waiting to be updated over a few years.
TR-3 was eventually deployed to warfighters in the year 2025. The consequences are huge. TR-3 is basically a replacement of the original integrated core processor and memory of the F-35 with hardware which is capable of supporting the data-fusion load the jet was originally intended to carry out. More sensor integration. Quick identification of threats. Better ability to fight electronic wars.
The fact that TR-3 deliveries were made is one of the reasons why the production might gain momentum that dramatically. Jets were no longer waiting in parking lots until they received software. The pipeline unclogged. And the $24 billion Lots 18-19 contract to acquire up to 296 more aircraft, the biggest production contract in the history of the program, indicates an expectation that the software issues will not recur on the scale.
Combat Performance At last Met the Marketing.
The F-35 has continually been marketed on pledges. Stealth. Sensor fusion. The capability to infiltrate defended airspace which would create a fourth-generation fighter into a shredder. However, these promises have until recently been mostly theoretical, in the sense that they work well in simulations and practice, but have not been demonstrated in the contexts where they are really important.
2025 changed that.
During the 12-day war in late 2024 and early 2025, Israeli F-35I Adirs made series of strike operations inside Iranian airspace. No more peripheral operations against soft targets, but penetrations into highly defended areas around nuclear facilities and military bases. They came back. All of them. The F-35Bs of the U.S. Marine Corps recorded almost 5000 mishap free flight hours in one of its deployments. And the air operations saw the involvement of F-35s, the first NATO operation to involve such aircraft in a response against Russian drones that had intruded into Polish airspace, the first time the fifth-generation jets had been used in friendly airspace.
Possibly, most notably, when the B-2s were being used to strike Iranian targets, the F-35s and F-22s would fly forward to provide air defense suppressions. It literally meant that the stealth fighters drove holes through the integrated air defense systems in order that the bombers can fly freely. The mission profile confirmed decades of doctrine development regarding the workings of the fifth-generation aircraft with the legacy platforms.
Backlog Increasing–Not Decreasing, in spite of Record Production.
The disequilibrium in supply and demand becomes genuinely bizarre here. At the start of 2025, Lockheed Martin had 265 backordered F-35s. In the year they shipped 191 aircraft- a record speed which should have cleared the queue by a large margin. Rather, the backlog had increased to about 416 aircraft at the end of the year. Italy put on board 25 jets to its program of record. Denmark committed to 16 more. The process of negotiations goes on with Saudi Arabia, Turkey (once again, despite the previous ejection), and, possibly, India. The overall program dedication has reached more than 3,000 planes in 20 countries.
What this translates to in practice: in the event that you are a country desirous of F-35s, join the queue. The rate of production is phenomenal in terms of any historical perspective, yet the demand is rising at a rate that cannot be matched by supply. Lockheed Martin will by no means be short of customers in the near future. The question is whether they can continue to scale-up further without reducing the quality or finding themselves in component bottlenecks.
Trump Wants Production to be Even Faster–and He’s Picking Fights to Happen.
It also seems that the F-35 record year was not sufficient to the new administration. In his first days as president in January 2025, President Trump was publicly targeting the defense contractors as he alleged to be producing slowly and with high executive compensation.
Lockheed Martin was not his target though. The parent company of Raytheon, which manufactures munitions, radar systems, and other elements, was RTX that contributes to the F-35 programs. In one of the broadsides in social media, Trump stated he would limit executive compensation to not more than 5 million dollars, ban stock buybacks and dividends, and insist on new production plants before business as usual could resume. Defense Contractor, Raytheon has been the least responsive to the needs of the Department of War, the slowest in building up their volume, and the most aggressive about their Shareholders instead of needs and demands of the United Military.
Firing the discussion of the merits of the critique aside, Raytheon recent performance is certainly a mixed message: faster production, capacity reinvestment or political implications. The 191-jet per annum of Lockheed Martin now appears more like a floor and less like a ceiling.
It is yet to be seen whether this pressure can speed up the production even more or it would only cause new issues (rushed timelines, quality issues, workforce burnout). The F-35 program however is currently working in an environment in which record output has become a element to be treated as acceptable but not exceptional.
The Bigger Picture
It is almost industrial-age seeing someone manufacturing fighter jet planes like they were a numbers game. Whereas the romance of aviation – test pilots stretching experimental aircraft to the furthest, group of engineers building custom flying machines – has yielded to supply chain management, software update schedules, and quarterly delivery targets.
But maybe that’s appropriate. F-35 was not designed to be the most successful fighter in all potential situations. It was created to become the fighter which could be really purchased, used and incorporated in significant numbers by the allied nations. The presence of a fleet that forces enemy calculations to change has a fleet-in-being. With 191 aircraft per year and on the increase, that fleet is increasing at a rate higher than anybody expected. The already flying 1,300 jets will soon be 2,000. Then 3,000. All of them form new nodes on a network of interoperable allied airpower between Norway and Japan to Australia.
Is that a stabilizing network or a flammable network on great-power rivalry? The sincere response is likely to be both–where you stand, and which flags you see being painted on the jets overhead.
The question to argue over is that the F-35 assembly line in Fort Worth is one of the most significant industrial processes in the world. One aircraft every 46 hours. And counting.
This article was produced in accordance with our editorial standards. Aviantics maintains strict editorial independence.
