{"id":266147,"date":"2026-06-06T17:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T21:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/06\/frce-delivers-first-f-35bs-with-technology-refresh-3-upgrades\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T18:10:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T22:10:00","slug":"frce-delivers-first-f-35bs-with-technology-refresh-3-upgrades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/06\/frce-delivers-first-f-35bs-with-technology-refresh-3-upgrades\/","title":{"rendered":"FRCE Delivers First F-35Bs with Technology Refresh-3 Upgrades"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theaviationist.com\/2026\/06\/06\/frce-delivers-first-f-35bs-with-technology-refresh-3-upgrades\/\">FRCE Delivers First F-35Bs with Technology Refresh-3 Upgrades<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theaviationist.com\/2026\/06\/06\/frce-delivers-first-f-35bs-with-technology-refresh-3-upgrades\/\">https:\/\/theaviationist.com\/2026\/06\/06\/frce-delivers-first-f-35bs-with-technology-refresh-3-upgrades\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-06 17:35:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"theaviationist.com\">theaviationist.com<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>The Fleet Readiness Center East completed the conversion of its first F-35Bs from the TR-2 to the TR-3 configuration, which will support the future Block 4 upgrades.\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p>A major milestone was reached for the F-35B Lightning II as the U.S. Navy\u2019s Fleet Readiness Center (FRC) East at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, North Carolina, completed the Technology Refresh-3 (TR-3) upgrade on its first aircraft. The TR-3 lays the foundation for the future upcoming Block 4 hardware upgrades.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Airframes BF-105 and BF-88 were delivered on May 14 and May 21, while \u201cBF-81 is projected to complete its conversion in July,\u201d the Jun. 2, 2026, press release from the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) said. The image of BF-105 capturing FRCE members standing before it after the TR-3 upgrades show that the airframe is assigned to the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron-231 (VMFA-231) \u201cAce of Spades,\u201d part of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing\u2019s (2nd MAW) constituent unit Marine Aircraft Group 14 (MAG 14).<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Marine Corps is the only U.S. service using the F-35B and, along with the carrier-launched F-35C, operates a total of 122 F-35s. Other foreign users of the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant of the F-35 include the U.K., Italy and Japan. The release also mentioned FCRE as among four other global depots for F-35 maintenance repair and modifications, which include Hill AFB and Ogden in Utah, Cameri in Italy and Williamstown in Australia.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Leveling up the Lightning! \u26a1\ufe0f<\/p>\n<p>The JPO has hit a major milestone by beginning the first-ever retrofits of operational F-35B Lightning II aircraft from the TR-2 to the advanced TR-3 configuration.<\/p>\n<p>This massive hardware and software upgrade equips the jets with a substantial boost\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/8rTN1GpD0b<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office (@theF35JPO) June 3, 2026<\/p>\n<p>The development comes close on the heels of a delay in the TR-3 program for all the three F-35 variants, seeing a stopgap simpler version&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theaviationist.com\/2026\/06\/06\/frce-delivers-first-f-35bs-with-technology-refresh-3-upgrades\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FRCE Delivers First F-35Bs with Technology Refresh-3 Upgrades https:\/\/theaviationist.com\/2026\/06\/06\/frce-delivers-first-f-35bs-with-technology-refresh-3-upgrades\/ Publish Date: 2026-06-06 17:35:00 Source Domain:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":266148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/theaviationist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/US-TR3-F-35B-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266149,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266147\/revisions\/266149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}