F-35B conducts captive-carry test with Lockheed Martin AGM-158C LRASM

An F-35B touches down, likely at NAS Patuxent River, with an LRASM on the left wing. (Lockheed Martin)

Lockheed Martin's AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) has made a captive-carry flight aboard an F-35B, the short-take-off-and-vertical-landing (STOVL) version of the aircraft, the company announced on 4 March. This follows the September 2024 flight of an F-35C carrying the munition.

What the company described as “an initial flight test” was conducted by the F-35 Pax River Integrated Test Force, the US Navy (USN) unit that conducts much of the F-35's weapons testing for the US Department of Defence (DoD). A photograph released by Lockheed Martin appears to show an F-35B conducting a conventional landing with a single LRASM on an inboard wing weapon station; the munition is too large to fit in the F-35's internal weapons bay.

The missile is intended to be integrated onto the F-35 Block 4 standard, according to Lockheed Martin. The company is currently building a predecessor version, designated Technical Refresh-3 (TR-3), intended to provide processing and electronic cooling capacity for the Block 4. However, TR-3 has run into significant teething issues, and the company's current deliveries are not combat-capable. Chauncey McIntosh, Lockheed Martin's F-35 general manager, told Janes during a 3 March interview that the company is planning a new TR-3 software release in boreal summer this year, but he declined to specify when either TR-3 or the subsequent Block 4 configurations might be combat-capable.