Northrop gets $124 million for delayed F-35 radar parts

The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman up to $123.8 million to buy long-lead parts for 67 AN/APG-85 radars, the new radar meant for the F-35 fighter, as brand-new jets continue to reach U.S. squadrons with ballast in their noses instead of radars.

The contract, announced Sept. 24 by the U.S. Department of War, covers materials, parts and components for what it calls APG-85 Lot 7, supporting the delivery schedule for 67 production radars for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy. Long-lead items are parts that take years to make and must be ordered well before final assembly.

The U.S. Air Force is paying $66.5 million and the U.S. Navy $57.3 million from fiscal 2026 aircraft procurement funds, all obligated at award. Northrop Grumman will do the work in Linthicum Heights, Maryland, and is scheduled to finish in February 2031. The fixed-price incentive contract, with a firm target price, was not competed. Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, Maryland, is managing it.

The APG-85 is an active electronically scanned array radar built with gallium nitride components. It is designed to replace the APG-81 that has flown on the F-35 for years and is a core piece of the Block 4 upgrade package. The F-35 Joint Program Office had planned to start fitting it to some jets in Lot 17, the aircraft production batch delivered from 2025 through September 2026.

The radar has not arrived on time. Lockheed Martin redesigned the nose structure of Lot 17 jets to hold the APG-85, and the new mounting cannot accept the older APG-81 without major structural rework. With no radar to install, Lockheed has been delivering jets with ballast in the nose to keep the aircraft balanced. Development problems with cooling and power consumption have contributed to the delay, Avionics International reported.

The first radar-less F-35B flew its acceptance flight in late February 2026. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on June 23, Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello, head of the F-35 Joint Program Office, told lawmakers the U.S. Marine Corps had accepted six F-35Bs without radars. He said he would not count those jets as fully mission capable. The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy were expected to start accepting aircraft in the same configuration later in 2026.

The jets can still fly and use their other sensors, including electro-optical systems, and they can receive data from other aircraft. They cannot search for, track or target aircraft on their own radar.

A fix on the production line is still years away. Lockheed has proposed a nose bulkhead that can take either radar, but it is not expected to be ready until Lot 20, whose deliveries begin in 2028, Breaking Defense reported. Jets delivered before then without radars are due to be retrofitted once APG-85s become available.

Export customers are not affected. F-35s built for foreign buyers, including Poland, still carry the APG-81, because the APG-85 is not being offered abroad.

The Marine Corps said the Block 4 schedule depended on developing several components at the same time and that delays to some of them disrupted the plan. It called that approach a calculated risk the program office needed to take.