Pratt & Whitney on Wednesday celebrated the production of its 1,000th F-135 military engine as the possibility that competition may emerge from an old rival to take on familiar complaints about high maintenance and repair costs.
The engine, first delivered in 2009, powers the F-35 fighter jet manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp. The two defense contractors have been under pressure for several years to cut costs, with government reports regularly reminding Congress of what it takes to keep the program going.
None of that was on display at the Middletown plant of Pratt & Whitney, the jet engine manufacturing subsidiary of Arlington, Virginia-based Raytheon Technologies Corp.
“There are a thousand examples of safe, affordable, dependable, fifth-generation propulsion in the hands of our customers,” Pratt & Whitney President Shane Eddy told about 100 workers and several executives at the manufacturer’s cavernous 2 million-square foot plant.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, whose district includes the Middletown plant and is chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee that directs much federal spending, said the F-135 is “key to our national security.”
“The F-135 is the most advanced, reliable, safest . . . most capable fighter engine in the world,” she said.
Congress’ watchdog agency, the General Accountability Office, reported the cost to operate and sustain the F-35 fleet for its planned 66-year life cycle is about $1.3 trillion, bringing the total cost to more than $1.7 trillion.
DeLauro is adamant about continued funding. “Now is not the time to divert resources away from the F-135,” she said.
Even with such a sum, the Defense Department’s strategy allows 6% of F-35s to be unavailable for missions at any given time due to “engine issues,” the GAO reported in July.
The number of F-35s that are available isn’t what the military considers sufficient, GAO said. And the Pentagon exceeds the 6% limit, partly because too few spare engine parts are available. As a result, 9% of F-35s were not operational in mid-2020.
“One major reason is that an increasing number of F-35s have not been able to fly because they don’t have a working engine,” the GAO said.
Pratt & Whitney says it has reduced the average cost of of an F-135 by more than 50%, or about $8 billion since its start 13 years ago. A “component improvement program” is projected to yield about $16 billion in cost savings.
While the focus is on production affordability, the engine manufacturer says it’s now “aggressively working” to achieve the same cost-cutting in sustainment, the costs related to maintenance and repair.
Strategies to reduce the cost of the first scheduled maintenance visit by about 40% are projected to save more than $14 billion over the life of the program, Pratt & Whitney said.
One of the most troublesome economic issues now is inflation, which an aviation analyst says is adding to the cost of the F-35.
“Materials are getting more expensive, like all materials on the planet,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace and defense management consultancy. “It’s problematic because cost production was an easy metric when we were at zero inflation. We’re not in that economy.”
As expensive as parts are, labor costs in maintenance and repair of engines account for a larger share of overall costs, he said.
General Electric Co., which lost to Pratt & Whitney in 2011 as a competitor when Congress halted production of an alternate F-35 engine, is back with another design. Its Ohio-based aviation unit has proposed its XA100 adaptive cycle engine that it says represents a “step-change in propulsion.”
Jeff Shockey, senior vice president of global government relations at Raytheon Technologies, said Pratt & Whitney has won the battle in Congress to be the sole source for the engine and is on the job.
”I struggle to understand why there would be a rationale to do a competition on something that’s performing extremely well and coming way down in costs and the learning curve every day.”
Aboulafia said both Pratt & Whitney and GE have an engine made for the F-35. “The problem here requires a lot more money to get ready,” he said.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who is protecting his home state manufacturer, said in an interview Monday that competition to Pratt & Whitney would likely increase costs because it would force a “whole new collection of spare parts” and changes to the aircraft to accommodate a new engine.
Blumenthal acknowledged that sustainment costs are a “continuing challenge, no question, especially in spare parts.” A defense spending bill being crafted includes a study at his request about how to close a spending gap of as much as $330 million on spare parts.
During the pandemic as commercial aviation was grounded and then struggled to rebound, the military business generated revenue for Raytheon Technologies and its contractors as U.S. military planners and Congress face global threats from Russia and China.
Pratt & Whitney posted sales last year of $18.2 billion, up 8% from 2020 when aviation was upended by the pandemic and Pratt & Whitney cut 450 salaried jobs in Connecticut. It employs 11,000 workers in Connecticut.
Revenue is down 13% from 2019 before COVID-19 grounded most airline fleets.
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