By Emelie Rutherford
A key senator said he believe the Pentagon’s business cases for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s second engine, which Congress is poised to defund this week, has improved and the program could be resurrected in next year’s budget.
The House is poised to vote tonight on a long-delayed FY ’11 federal budget that would not fund the General Electric [GE]-Rolls-Royce F136 alternate engine, which President Barack Obama and the Pentagon have dubbed too expensive and have been trying to cancel for years. The Senate and Obama are expected to approve the FY ’11 spending plan by week’s end.
Support for the alternate engine, though, remains among senior lawmakers including House Speaker John Beohner (R-Ohio) as well as the heads of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the House and Senate armed services committees. Those panels are currently weighing the FY ’12 Pentagon budget, which will start Oct. 1.
Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told Defense Daily yesterday he was pressing the Pentagon to give him a revised business-case assessment of the costs of the F136 engine and the primary F135, developed by Pratt & Whitney [UTX].
Levin noted that in early 2010 the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office stated continuing development of both the alternate and primary engine would cost roughly the same as pursing just the F135. The CAPE, though, advised against continuing the second engine, noting it would not save money. Still, some lawmakers seized on the business-case assessment to bolster their argument for continuing to override the Pentagon and fund the second engine (Defense Daily, March 1, 2010).
“I want a new business case,” Levin said yesterday. “There’s a big cost overrun (with the primary engine), so since the previous assessment of the Pentagon was there is a break-even deal, doesn’t…the cost overrun of the first engine change the business case for the first engine, and the business case which the Pentagon claimed existed against the second engine? …If you look at the cost of this plane, (the business case) would improve for the F136 (with the new cost-overrun data on the F135), I think.”
The SASC chairman said he believes such a revised business-case analysis could bolster support on Capitol Hill for reinserting F136 funding into the FY ’12 defense budget. Yet he acknowledged the General Electric-Rolls-Royce team likely would have to fund the F-136 on its own until the FY ’12 budget kicks in.
The Pentagon issued the industry team a stop-work order last month on the alternate engine, calling it “a waste of taxpayer money that can be used to fund higher departmental priorities.” In response, General Electric said it would fund the program with its own monies for 90 days (Defense Daily, March 25).
General Electric spokesman Rick Kennedy said in a statement yesterday his company and Rolls-Royce, in response to the FY ’11 budget deal that defunds the F136, “will keep the GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team together by maintaining a core technical team to protect, enhance, and advance propulsion technologies for JSF and future combat aircraft.”
“The team is being sized in a manner consistent with overall JSF schedule slips,” he added.
Kennedy signaled the company will continue to lobby Congress to fund the alternate engine in FY ’12.
“Senate and House leaders from both parties are strongly encouraging us to continue the fight for acquisition reform through competition in the (FY ’12) defense bill,” Kennedy said.
Still, significant opposition to the alternate engine remains on Capitol Hill. And despite Boehner’s support for it, he had to agree to not fund it in the last-minute FY ’11 federal budget deal he reached last Friday night with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
SASC Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.), a vehement opponent of the second engine, hesitated to say yesterday that it was dead.
There are “people who will try to resurrect it, certainly,” McCain said at the Capitol.