From its anonymous digs in Crystal City, the Pentagon’s high-rise civilian annex, the Joint Program Office for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning wrote $36 billion in contracts in 2023 alone. But when the program office and Lockheed Martin sought a new integrated core processor in the late 2010s, L3Harris undercut incumbent Northrop Grumman, won the contract—and quickly fell behind schedule. (In 2023 alone the program office ordered 40 more engines than airframes.) The second front in the thermal war is to adopt a new PTMS design, with Lockheed Martin running a contest between RTX Collins and incumbent Honeywell. That means that a new low-end fighter would have to be the heavily improved F-35 that Lockheed Martin is talking about.