As the U.S. Air Force awaits congressional action on the service requested $245 million in fiscal 2024 to begin the F135 Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) by Raytheon Technologies‘ [RTX] Pratt & Whitney, the company is highlighting not only the goals for improved F135 ECU engine performance and cooling compared to the baseline F135, but also the number of jobs involved.
Pratt & Whitney wants to field the F135 ECU by 2028 to enable weapon and sensor upgrades in Block 4 of the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 fighter.
“We have over 55,000 people across the United States that work on that [F135] program,” Jill Albertelli, the president of Pratt & Whitney’s military engines business, said on June 8th in a Punchbowl News forum sponsored by Raytheon.
The F135 engine program employs workers “in over 41 states, over 420 suppliers,” Albertelli said. “It’s critical.”
Albertelli addressed the forum after Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel.
“In the state of Maine, we have 1,200 people,” Albertelli said. “It’s one of the best manufacturing facilities focused on that F135 engine.”
The Pratt & Whitney plant in North Berwick, Maine outside Portland provides parts for the F135.
“I’m an engineer, not a marketeer,” said Albertelli, a 1991 graduate in engineering from Boston University, who has worked at Pratt & Whitney since graduation. “It [the F135] is truly–technically proven–the safest, the most lethal, and most capable engine out there, period. Our data and statistics show that. We have over 600,000 hours.”
Pratt & Whitney has said that it plans to have the F135 ECU fielded by 2028.
The F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) considers the F135 ECU and a new or upgraded Power and Thermal Management System (PTMS) as a single effort (Defense Daily, May 31).
Honeywell [HON] builds the PTMS as a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin. The PTMS uses air pressure from the engine to cool aircraft subsystems and enables main engine start, emergency power, cockpit conditioning, equipment cooling, and some electrical power.
Last month, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said that the F135 will need a new or improved PTMS to accommodate future weapons and sensors on the aircraft (Defense Daily, May 30). The question appears to be when.
The GAO report said that the F135’s cooling system “is overtasked, requiring the engine to operate beyond its design parameters” and that “the extra heat is increasing the wear on the engine, reducing its life, and adding $38 billion in maintenance costs.”
“There are multiple PTMS options under review; selection will be based on the requirements specified by the services,” the F-35 JPO said after the GAO report release. “The modernization effort (both ECU and PTMS) is expected to be fielded in the early 2030 timeframe. We are in the early design phase and the schedule is dependent upon the approved solution.”
“The JPO is already very confident we can minimize the $38 billion impact simply with ECU,” the F-35 program said. “The ECU will restore engine life, and the PTMS solution will ensure that the air vehicle can support future capability growth. We are treating the ECU and PTMS as a single modernization effort because they must be designed together to work with the greatest efficiency.”
The F-35 program has said that the F135 will need an improved PTMS, “as bleed air and power extraction to support the current PTMS is nearly double the specification value and is preventing F135 engines from achieving their designed overhaul intervals.”
The GAO report called into question whether the F135 ECU will provide enough cooling to accommodate Block 4 or whether the F135 ECU will need a new or upgraded PTMS as well to allow Block 4
“Modernization capabilities—including Block 4 capabilities already installed and future ones planned for through 2035—require even more cooling capacity and air pressure than the PTMS and the engine can support, respectively,” the study said. “Program officials noted that Lockheed Martin did not anticipate needing more cooling from the PTMS when it proposed Block 4. However, the addition of Block 4 will require more cooling capacity.”
The GAO report said that the F-35 program “determined that it must upgrade the PTMS by 2029 to enable capabilities planned through 2035 and upgrade the engine to reduce life-cycle costs.”
The study said that, 15 years ago, Lockheed Martin discovered that the Honeywell PTMS would need more air pressure from the F135 to cool F-35 subsystems and that, “in 2013, Lockheed Martin requested to change the F135’s design to provide more air pressure to the PTMS, but program officials determined that it was too late to redesign the engine given the cost and schedule effects of such a change at that stage of the overall program.”
“Program officials decided to continue with the F135 engine’s original design with the understanding that there would be increased wear and tear, more maintenance, and reduced life on the engine because it would need to provide more air pressure to the PTMS than its design intended,” the report said.