The Pentagon has declared its intention to make Pratt & Whitney the sole provider of fixes for the overheating engines in the F-35 jets. The F-35 Joint Program Office will give Pratt multiple follow-on contract actions on a sole source basis, with a contract for the next phase of development awarded in the second quarter of fiscal 2024 through the end of 2031.
Pratt & Whitney will complete preliminary design work on the Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) next month. Jen Latka, Pratt’s vice president for the F135 program, says that Pratt has 600 employees fully dedicated to this effort and is on track to deliver the upgraded engines beginning in 2029. The Joint Program Office has outlined overarching requirements for the engine upgrade, including maintaining a common engine between the three variants and improving the overall engine life.
This announcement is a blow to GE, which had proposed to deal with the problem by replacing the Pratt-built F135 engine with a next-gen power plant. Pratt and GE both have teams developing an adaptive engine under the Air Force’s Adaptive Engine Transition Program, and this technology will be used when they compete to build the engine that will power the Air Force’s next fighter jets under a program dubbed Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion.
