Name: Lockheed Martin Is Betting on New F-35 Drone Tech for Future Flights
Uploaded: 2025-09-22T04:01:00Z
Duration: 6 min 11 s
Description: Lockheed Martin is developing new technology to allow F-35 fighter pilots to control drones. WSJ toured the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility to see the jets and futuristic tech.

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Lockheed Martin is developing new technology to allow F-35 fighter pilots to control drones. WSJ toured the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility to see the jets and futuristic tech. Photo: Lockheed Martin

https://m.wsj.net/video/20250919/69c5ee47-f75e-470b-a869-0e55d97763ce/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Lockheed Martin is developing new technology to allow F-35 fighter pilots to control drones. WSJ toured the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility to see the jets and futuristic tech.

Lockheed Martin Is Betting on New F-35 Drone Tech for Future Flights

Shelby: The F-35 is currently considered one of the most advanced weapons in the world, and in the coming years, its missions are set to become even more high tech with pilots flying alongside teams of drones or what the US military calls Collaborative Combat Aircraft or CCAs. To control those drones, the F-35's maker, Lockheed Martin is unveiling new technology for the cockpit, and Lockheed just announced a new drone that it says will be a CCA.

We've been building drones since the beginning, so for decades, we've done this.

Shelby: But after missing out on key contracts, can Lockheed and its F-35 stay in the game? We visited the company's Fort Worth facility to get a closer look at the jets and the secretive technology that could carry them into the future. Before we dive into futuristic drone flights, let's talk about the F-35.

The F-35 is the most capable, the most lethal, the most connected, and the most survivable fighter aircraft flying on the face of the planet today.

Shelby: The jet's powerful engine allows it to fly 1.6 times the speed of sound. Its coating and design edges help it evade enemy detection and its weapon base can carry multiple payloads internally, including nuclear weapons. The importance of putting them inside the plane is for stealth.

Yeah, the importance of keeping them in, having the weapons bay is stealth, right? So, if you think the opening days of a conflict, then we're probably gonna go in with just internal weapons.

Shelby: Different versions of the F-35 can take off and land on different types of runways. Some can even lift off vertically to strike from unexpected airfields and ships. This jet has tons of sensors on it.

Yes.

Shelby: What do those sensors detect?

So, with all the sensors on this aircraft, we can pick up missile launches, we can pick up aircraft, both friendly and adversary, we can see surface ships, we can see anything basically that's out there that's emanating some sort of energy. The F-35 has the capability to not only detect it, but geo-locate it as well.

Shelby: While a cutting-edge fighter from Boeing is set to enter service in the coming years, Lockheed says the F-35 is currently the best-positioned aircraft for flights of the future, the ones that involve teams of drones flying alongside pilots.

Shelby: Military officials say these missions would be particularly important in a war against China, which has been rapidly expanding its arsenal. For example, if Beijing were to try and seize Taiwan, F-35s could take off from an aircraft carrier while several hidden CCA drones that they're commanding would take off from sites across the Pacific and sync up. Some CCAs could act as decoys, some could deploy electronic warfare, some could do surveillance, and others could strike defenses and key targets. As the battle unfolds, the pilots in the F-35s would command the drones to carry out their mission.

Lots of experienced pilots from the Weapons School and Top Gun have come through here over the last two years.

Shelby: In the company's FAST Lab, which stands for Future Air Superiority Technology Lab, I strapped on some biometric monitors. Got that. Stepped into a simulator and got to experience a small slice of what that kind of mission would look like.

So, the scenario that we've got you in right now, Shelby, is you as a single F-35, are quarterbacking for CCAs.

Shelby: Using software that Lockheed calls Angry Bees, I was able to tell four of my drones to attack eight incoming enemy aircraft. On my tablet, it looked more like this. The drones have a high level of autonomy and commanding them was almost like a video game that took just minutes to figure out. We're Miller Time?

Miller time.

Mission accomplished. But of course, we couldn't vet the tech with real drones, and what I experienced was a far cry from what it's like to fly in a real battle. You're a pilot. How hard is it to fly an actual airplane and command drones at the same time?

These pilots that we're talking about are masters of their machines.

Former Air Force Pilot, OJ Sanchez is now Vice President of Aeronautics for Skunk Works, which created the Angry Bees Interface. Skunk Works is a storied but secretive unit within Lockheed that developed some of America's most advanced and classified weapons since World War II. We've seen, especially in Ukraine, that drones can be controlled from the ground. Why is it better to control them from the sky?

The pilot that sees the airspace that is moving at the speed of the air war is in the best position to adapt and react at the speed of the fight. So in many cases, CCAs will be best controlled by the pilots at the leading edge of the air battle so that they can adapt, they can move, shoot, and respond to the situation in real time.

Even though Lockheed's F-35 will continue to fly for years, the road ahead for the company is full of competition. Lockheed lost out on the US's sixth generation fighter jet contract, which went to Boeing. And for CCA prototype contracts, Lockheed has so far been beaten out by companies like Andural and General Atomics. Lockheed said it did get a contract for the US Navy's CCA mission control system, and Lockheed recently unveiled a new survivable drone that it hopes will be used as a CCA in the future. But as of yet, the military has not agreed to purchase it. Do you see your company and Skunk Works particularly playing a big role in the future of CCA?

So, we will absolutely continue to build CCAs. So, we're not waiting to be asked by any particular customer. We're listening to our customers, trying to understand what's needed, and we're moving out and building products from a lineage of products that we think will change the face of the battlespace.

What are your biggest concerns as we move into this new era of warfare?

Honestly, I think it's actually us humans, our ability to change and to go fast. So, I think I worry most that we don't have enough of a sense of urgency. The technologists and the technology and the war fighters are more than capable of getting us to that future.

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