Lockheed Has Delivered 1,387 F-35s. On Oct. 22 the Pentagon Agreed to Keep Buying Them for 10 More Years

On October 22, 2026, the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin announced a 10-year framework for buying the F-35. It covers production lots 21 through 30 at 156 jets a year, with at least 850 of them for the US military.

That is a decade of orders for a fighter that has already been built in huge numbers. The same day, Lockheed’s quarterly filing put the count at 1,387 production F-35s delivered through September 27, 2026, with another 274 in its backlog.

How Many F-35s Have Been Built?

Lockheed Martin had delivered 1,387 production F-35s from the start of the program through September 27, 2026, according to its third-quarter 2026 report to the SEC. That total covers all three versions of the F-35 Lightning II and every customer, the US and its allies together.

It counts production jets, the ones built under contract and handed to a customer. The development aircraft Lockheed built to test the design are not part of the figure, and neither are jets still on the assembly line.

F-35s Built by Variant

Lockheed builds three versions of the jet. The F-35A takes off and lands on a normal runway, the F-35B can take off from a short deck and land vertically, and the F-35C has bigger wings and a tailhook for catapult carriers.

The F-35A dominates because it is the version most air forces buy, including the US Air Force. Roughly seven of every 10 F-35s delivered are As.

The F-35C is the rarest, at 143 jets. Only the United States flies it, split between the Navy and the Marine Corps, while the B serves the Marines and allies such as the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan.

Why Other Sites Quote Different Numbers

Search for the F-35 count and you will see “over 1,300,” “1,375+” and 1,387 sitting side by side. Most of the gap comes from four things: the date, rounding, delivered versus built, and delivered versus still flying.

Rounding and timing. Lockheed’s own F-35 fact sheet shows “1,375+ aircraft delivered,” a figure it updates monthly and rounds down. Breaking Defense’s report on the October 22 deal said “over 1,300.” Both are consistent with 1,387; they just round differently or lag the latest filing.

Built is not the same as delivered. Lockheed delivered no F-35s at all in the first half of 2024, then resumed in the third quarter with jets in the new Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) configuration. The Defense Contract Management Agency later told Bloomberg that 93 of the 191 jets accepted in 2025 had been due in previous years.

So in any given month, the number of F-35s that physically exist can run ahead of the number Lockheed has handed over. The company reports deliveries, which is why that is the figure we use.

Delivered is not the same as flying. About a dozen F-35s have been destroyed in crashes, by Wikipedia’s tally of 12 as of August 2026, so the active fleet is slightly smaller than the delivery count.

For the American side of the count, our breakdown of how many fighter jets the US has splits the F-35A, B and C by service alongside every other US fighter.

How the Number Got Here

Lockheed delivered its 300th production F-35 on June 11, 2018. It took about seven more years to pass 1,300, with a COVID dip in 2020 and the 2024 delivery pause along the way.

The 191 jets delivered in 2025 beat the old record of 142, set in 2021. Strip out the 93 late jets, though, and only 98 of them were deliveries actually due that year.

2026 is running slower. Lockheed delivered 94 F-35s in the first nine months, against 143 in the same stretch of 2025, and gave no full-year delivery forecast.

Where the Number Is Going: the 10-Year Deal

The October 22 framework would keep the F-35 line at 156 jets a year for lots 21 through 30, or 1,560 aircraft across the decade. Lockheed has said it can hold F-35 production at 156 jets a year, and the deal locks that rate in rather than raising it.

At least 850 of those jets would go to the US military, along with initial spare parts, modification kits and fleet sustainment. Lockheed agreed to put at least $7 billion of its own money into the program.

It is not yet a contract. The Pentagon said it “remains subject to congressional authorization and appropriations,” and multiyear buying authority for the F-35 sits in the fiscal 2027 defense bills, which Congress has not passed.

The order book behind the line has been thinning. Lockheed’s F-35 backlog stood at 408 jets at the end of 2024, 368 at the end of 2025 and 274 by September 2026, because deliveries have outpaced new orders.

Nearer term, Lockheed is still negotiating Lot 20, and its executives do not expect it to be finalized until 2027. The last two-lot deal, Lots 18 and 19, covered 296 aircraft; our look at what the newest F-35 lots cost explains why the price per jet has climbed.

Breaking Defense reports that the program is projected to run into the 2080s. The count on this page will keep moving every quarter for a long time.