By Emelie Rutherford
A top Air Force official told lawmakers who support continuing a disputed jet engine yesterday that military officials’ opposition results from a “close call” made after weighing the impact of continuing or ending the program.
House Armed Services Committee (HASC) members quizzed Air Force Secretary Michael Donley during a budget hearing about why the Pentagon had not yet turned over a business-case analysis explaining why it opposes continuing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters’ second engine, developed by General Electric [GE] and Rolls- Royce.
Congress has funded the alternate engine program over Pentagon objections in recent years, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pledged to push President Barack Obama to veto fiscal year 2011 defense legislation that continues the program.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who became the chairman of the HASC Air and Land Forces subcommittee last month, quizzed Donley on the Air Force and Pentagon’s anti-alternate-engine stance, which he said leaves him “puzzled.”
Smith argued there are benefits to having engine competition and a backup engine in case of a failure of the primary one, and said “it’s debatable” if continuing the alternate engine would result in higher costs over the F-35 program’s life. He cited past analysis, done before the not-yet-delivered new one, that there would be no or little cost difference between having one or two F-35 engines.
Donley said the second engine “has been one of the most difficult issues that we have wrestled with.”
“We have looked at the analysis on this from all sides for many, many months, and in some respects…it can be regarded as a close call,” he said.
“It is a close enough call that we cannot see right now the benefits of…what we think is still a considerable remaining investment that would have to be made in a second engine–the logistics tail that goes with it,…all the pre-production work, the remaining development–which may be understated in some quarters–the firm costs that are associated with those activities against the soft savings that may be out there in the future….It just looks too cloudy to us.”
Smith replied he doesn’t “think the savings are particularly soft.”
“The (Defense Department) DoD has made a very strong case in many other programs about the benefits of competition and the way it can motivate a contractor, without question,” he said. With 95 percent of the future fighter aircraft fleet pegged to be F-35s, he said, having a backup engine if the primary one fails is “a pretty compelling argument.”
Donley acknowledged a recent letter HASC members sent the Pentagon requesting the recent business-case analysis; lawmakers and aides have been frustrated they have not yet received this data, which Gates has cited as bolstering his opposition to the alternate engine. Donley said military officials are “gathering up all the data and the analysis that we have had in front of us the last several months,” and will report on it to the committee “very soon.”
Smith said the Pentagon’s failure to deliver the new analysis is a “frustration” for lawmakers.
Multiple HASC members lamented that they are relying on an older 2007 analysis by the Pentagon’s Cost Analysis Improvement Group (CAIG); it found no compelling cost difference between having one or two F-35 engines. Some lawmakers have suggested an updated analysis, done after second-engine investments in recent years, would reflect more positively on continuing the engine effort.
Donley, noting “challenges” facing the technically and financially troubled F-35 fighter-development effort overall, argued continuing with the second-engine effort “is another rock on top of the F-35 program.”
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, joining Donley at the HASC hearing on the service’s FY ’11 budget request, similarly argued “if having more engines results in less F-35s, that is not a good scenario for the Air Force or the Department of Defense.”
Schwartz held continuing the F-35 alternate engine is “problematic” because only the Air Force–not the Navy or the European F-35 buyers–would use more than one engine.