A Pratt & Whitney executive on Monday called on Congress to fund the Air Force’s Aircraft Engine Component Improvement Program (CIP) following a pair of critical reports from government watchdogs over the company’s progress with the F-35’s engine, the F135.
The Defense Department inspector general (DoD IG) on Monday released a report that found 61 “nonconformities,” or violations of AS9100C, regulatory requirements and DoD policies during an inspection. DoD IG found the F135 critical safety item (CSI) program did not meet DoD CSI requirements, including requirements for parts identification, critical characteristic identification, part determination methodology and supplier identification.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released April 14 called F135 reliability “very poor” and less than half of where it should be. The report also said reliability issues have limited the F-35 program’s progress toward its overall reliability targets.
GAO said Pratt & Whitney has identified a number of design changes that it believes will improve engine reliability, but some of those changes have not yet been implemented. Pratt & Whitney spokesman Matthew Bates said Monday some of these retrofits include design changes like going from a hollow fan blade to a solid fan blade. Bates said the company is implementing other design changes, but he declined to specify further.
Pratt & Whitney pushed back against the critical reports Monday, calling them based on old data. Company Vice President for Communications and Government Relations Jay DeFrank said the GAO report data was from a “snapshot in time,” the third quarter of 2014, when the data was weighted toward the early engines. Early in development programs is when problems are more likely to occur. DeFrank said Pratt & Whitney validated fixes through extensive testing.
Pratt & Whitney President of Military Engines Bennett Croswell said the DoD IG’s report was more critical of the company’s management system, rather than the F135 itself. DoD IG found that Pratt & Whitney did not establish a specific quality program plan that described the management of unique F135 program quality assurance requirements. DoD IG also found the system design and development (SDD) contract required the company maintain a quality management system and that a quality plan be summarized in the body of the propulsion system development plan (PSDP).
Croswell, in a briefing with reporters Monday, didn’t dispute much of the data, but criticized the language used in the reports, like GAO calling the F135’s reliability poor.
“I think the report uses language like ‘It’ll be a long time before Pratt can deliver that kind of capability,’” Croswell said. “We can deliver it today, we just have to get the engines in the field retrofitted.”
Croswell said it’s important for Congress to fund CIP because it allows all engine companies, not just Pratt & Whitney, to continue testing. The Air Force requested $104 million for CIP in fiscal year 2016, with $31 million earmarked for the F-35 program. The Air Force, in budget justification books, called CIP the only source of critical sustaining engineering support for F-35 propulsion systems to maintain flight safety, to correct service-revealed deficiencies, to improve system operational readiness and reliability and maintainability, among others.
Croswell said if Congress funds CIP, Pratt & Whitney plans to extend the life of the F135 by 50 percent beyond specification.
“For us to continue to improve the engine post the end of SDD next year, the CIP program will be the only vehicle for us to continue design improvements and to run engines to validate those improvements and to validate our cost reduction tasks, too,” Croswell said.
Pratt & Whitney and DoD said in March they’re still pursuing a long-term solution to the F135 problem that lead to an engine fire last summer. Excessive flexing of the F135 during flight last summer caused an engine to overheat and develop microcracks as it flexed and rubbed.
The microcracks grew so large they started a chain reaction on an Air Force variant F-35A, leading to the fire. Bates said in March a long-term fix, pre-trenching the stator, is being incorporated into current production engines and into already-fielded product. This process, he said, should be complete by early 2016 (Defense Daily, March 27).
Pratt & Whitney is a division of United Technologies Corp. [UTX]