Work on the Senate version of the 2010 defense authorization bill continued Thursday, with a retreat by the lawmakers in the face of another Administration veto threat—this one targeting the long-held Congressional desire to keep in play an alternate engine for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. For several years, the Pentagon has tried to quash the General Electric-Rolls Royce F136 program it began a decade ago to compete with the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine that now powers the F-35, and each time Congress has restored funding for the F136. However, on Thursday, Senators voted unanimously to support an amendment from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), in whose state P&W builds the F135, to cancel alternate engine funding in the defense policy bill. In a July 23 statement, GE officials state that “the funding battle … is far from over,” noting that House lawmakers and the Senate Armed Services Committee favored the alternate engine. They also state that the F136 development program “is 70 percent complete [and] has been executed on schedule and on cost.” All will have to await House and Senate conference negotiations.
Gas is king in the vast expanse of the Pacific. And as the Pentagon has sought to build up its capability to deter China, the Department of Defense has undergone a major rethink about how to get fuel to the region. At the heart of the effort is the U.S. Transportation…