By Marina Malenic
The Defense Department is pressing the manufacturer of the primary engine for its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to keep costs in check, the department’s acquisition chief said yesterday.
“I’m confident it’s going to be a good engine,” said Ashton Carter, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. “I’m not happy…with cost performance so far.”
Carter was speaking to lawmakers at a hearing of the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee.
Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies [UTX], is manufacturing the F135 engine that powers all three variants of the F-35–a conventional variant for the Air Force; a short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant for the Marine Corps; and a carrier variant for the Navy. Lockheed Martin [LMT] is developing the airplane.
The Pentagon earlier this month issued a stop-work order to General Electric [GE] and industry partner Rolls-Royce [RR], calling their alternate F136 engine for the program “a waste of taxpayer money that can be used to fund higher departmental priorities.” President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have been singling out the program as an example of “government waste” ever since Obama took office.
Several legislators, including Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) yesterday questioned the wisdom of that move, noting that competition between the two companies in the 1980s on the F-16 engine acquisition yielded cost reductions.
“It’s not a dead issue,” Moran said.
However, a fiscal 2011 defense spending plan approved by Congress this week does not fund the F136 at this time. Supporters including Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) have talked of trying to restore funding for the second engine in the fiscal 2012 budget (Defense Daily, April 13).
Carter noted that F135 cost growth is not his main concern for the program as a whole.
“The airframe is outstripping the engine in terms of cost growth,” Carter said.
“A lot of F135 cost growth occurred early in the program,” he said. The Pentagon began during the summer of 2009 “very aggressively” revamping Pratt & Whitney’s manufacturing processes and supply chain management to slow that growth, he said.
“Pratt was very good at development, but they had not yet thought through their processes of assembling the engines very well, as of two years ago,” he added.
At the time, Carter sent a Joint Assessment Team to study the company’s planned manufacturing processes.
“We realized that, if we want to reduce costs, we have to look at the supply chain,” he said. “And we did, and we began to competitively find other sources for the parts.”
He told lawmakers that cost reduction efforts on both the engine and the program as a whole will continue.
Carter also said the department is closely monitoring developmental progress of the STOVL aircraft. He said the aircraft’s weight is “right at the limit of being able to land the aircraft.”
Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced a “probation” period for the STOVL variant, which has encountered more developmental challenges than the other two, simpler models (Defense Daily, Jan. 7). The Marines have said they need the STOVL variant to replace the 25-year-old AV-8B Harrier, which is used when landing on amphibious warfare vessels and improvised airstrips.
HAC-D Chairman C.W. “Bill” Young (R-Fla.) noted the extensive use of Harriers in operations against Libya.
“I think that created a lot more interest in the STOVL application,” Young said.