The Defense Department on Aug. 29 resumed deliveries of the engine that powers the F-35 after an aircraft fire and supply chain issue earlier this summer halted deliveries.
Joe DellaVedova, spokesman for DoD’s F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), said Monday in a statement DoD in late August resumed the routine shipment from Pratt & Whitney of the remaining low-rate initial production (LRIP) 6 engines in support of the F-35 production facility in Fort Worth, Texas. DellaVedova said these engines were built, or were completing build, before the June 23 engine failure at Eglin AFB, Fla.
DellaVedova said engineers from the federal government, Pratt & Whitney and F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin [LMT] are close to validating the root cause of the engine incident. Once the root cause is validated, DellaVedova said, the appropriate modifications will be made to the engine design for future production and will be retrofitted into previously delivered engines.
DellaVedova said the four engines that have been shipped from Pratt & Whitney’s facility in Connecticut to Texas are “months away” from their first flight and will fly under the current flight restrictions until the solution is implemented.
A fire to an F-35A Air Force variant in June eventually lead to the temporary grounding of the entire Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) fleet. F-35 Program Executive Officer (PEO) Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said last week the fire was due to how the F135 engine flexed during flight more than DoD expected, which lead to a chain reaction of events that ended with a fire to a fuel tank while the affected aircraft was preparing for liftoff (Defense Daily, Sept. 5).
Bogdan last week also commended Pratt & Whitney for its handling of a titanium supply chain issue that led to the contractor halting engine deliveries earlier this summer.
Pratt & Whitney said in an Aug. 30 statement that supplier surveillance in late May discovered conflicting documentation that raised questions about the origin of raw material provided to a parts supplier. This raw material was used to manufacture some parts used in the company’s engines. That raw material was titanium, Pratt & Whitney spokesman Matthew Bates said Sept. 2.
Pratt & Whitney said it immediately reported its concern to the Defense Criminal Investigation Services (DCIS), the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the United States Attorney’s Office. The company also followed established customer notification processes, it said.
Soon after this issue was detected, Pratt & Whitney said it issued a Government Industry Data Exchange Program (GIDEP) alert, which notified the industry and the company’s peers about this supplier concern.
“From our perspective, Pratt did everything they were supposed to do right,” Bogdan said Sept. 3 after a presentation at the ComDef 2014 conference in downtown Washington. “We have a problem with A&P Alloy now.”
Bogdan said Pratt & Whitney stopped delivering its F135 engines when it discovered the supply chain issue in late May. Pratt & Whitney said the sub-tier supplier, A&P Alloys of Massachusetts, has been eliminated from its supply chain and that Pratt & Whitney is no longer accepting parts made from material provided by the company. Bogdan said Pratt & Whitney acted in June to purge its supply of the suspected metal, even when it wasn’t sure whether or not it was bad.
Pratt & Whitney is picking up the tab for the costs associated with halting engine delivery and eliminating the suspect metal from it supply chain. A man who answered the phone at A&P Alloys declined to comment and referred Defense Daily to a law firm retained by the company.
“Pratt & Whitney has taken full responsibility for their supplier,” Bogdan said.
Pratt & Whitney said it filed a civil suit against A&P Alloys Aug. 29 in U.S. District Court for the district of Massachusetts. The filing could not be confirmed in PACER, the federal government’s repository for federal court filings.
Bates said the raw material supply chain issue is not related to the June F-35A fire.
Richard Aboulafia, Teal Group vice president of analysis, told Defense Daily Monday companies can’t completely ensure their sources of important aerospace metals are safe. The best companies can do, Aboulafia said, is promptly discover bad actors and prevent them from doing the same sort of thing.
“It’s a business based upon relationships,” Aboulafia said. “If you screw up like this, it jeopardizes your future. That’s sort of been the self-cleansing aspect of the supply chain.”
Along with prime contractor Lockheed Martin and engine supplier Pratt & Whitney, the F-35 is developed by subcontractors BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman [NOC]. Pratt & Whitney is a division of United Technologies Corp. [UTX]