By Marina Malenic
The manufacturer of the primary engine for the Pentagon’s next-generation stealth fighter jet development effort is concerned that further delays and potential cuts to the aircraft program could in turn damage small- and medium-sized enterprises that make up the engine’s supply chain.
Pratt & Whitney, the United Technologies [UTX] division building the F135 engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, said the scores of small companies that make up its supply chain are highly specialized. Many are located in F-35 partner companies such as Australia, according to company Vice President Bennett Croswell.
“One thing I worry about on the program is…if there are a lot of slips in production deliveries, the volume starts to come down,” Croswell said during a press briefing yesterday. “I have concerns about these small and medium enterprises that aren’t going to be able to recoup the investments they made to get on the program.”
Lockheed Martin [LMT] is building three versions of the F-35 for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, as well as several foreign militaries. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was briefed last month on new cost and schedule assessments for the F-35. He was told at the time that delivery of the fighter could be delayed by another one to three years and cost $5 billion more than the most recently released estimates indicate (Defense Daily, Nov. 3).
Meanwhile, the chairmen of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, last month unveiled proposals for balancing the nation’s budget. They recommended substituting new F-16s and F/A-18Es for half of the Air Force and Navy’s planned F-35 buys and killing the Marine Corps variant (Defense Daily, Nov. 19).
Croswell said that such deep cuts would have a devastating effect on the engine program’s supply base. He said many are already operating at a significantly lower output than they had planned for at the outset of the program.
“To the extent that volumes were to reduce, some of those companies would no longer be viable,” he said. “We sometimes forget about them, those kinds of companies.”
Pratt & Whitney is currently in the midst of negotiations on a fourth low-rate initial production (LRIP) lot of engines. The Defense Department last year conducted a “should-cost” review of the program, and Croswell said that company officials hope to settle on a price somewhat below that cost curve. He added that the company’s goal is to reach the cost of the F-22 Raptor’s F119 engine by time the 250th F135 production engine is delivered.
LRIP 4 will be the first fixed-price production lot, according to Croswell. Pratt has been working on cost-plus contracts for the F135 to date.