Bridget Lauderdale, vice president and general manager of the F-35 program at Lockheed Martin, said the company is seeing the recovery of the F-35 fighter jet supply chain after a year of factory closures and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Defense One reported Thursday.
“We’re seeing the return of a good portion of the workforce back into normal operations,” Lauderdale said in an interview Wednesday.
She said Lockheed officials expect to deliver 133 to 139 units of the fighter jet in 2021 and are now working with the customer to facilitate those deliveries.
“We are also working with them [on] the most effective way to plan 2022 deliveries and on, to make sure that we restore a production operation and a production line that is both delivering efficiently and effectively, and continuing to deliver high-quality product,” added Lauderdale, who took the helm of Lockheed’s F-35 program in April.