A major planned upgrade for the F-35 fighter’s engine is expected to reach a major milestone in August when it undergoes its critical design review, an Air Force official said July 27.
F135
The Pentagon awarded RTX’s Pratt & Whitney a $1.6 billion contract for sustainment work on the F-35's engine on Nov. 28. The deal includes everything from software maintenance to spare parts for the F135 engine and runs through November 2026, spanning a dozen locations around the globe.
Pratt & Whitney and the F-35 Joint Program Office have completed the preliminary design review of the Engine Core Upgrade of the fighter’s F135 engine, the company said this week, adding that the ECU is “on schedule and exceeding expectations.” Pratt is a subsidiary of ...
The F-35 Joint Program Office has officially announced plans to issue multiple sole-source contracts to Pratt & Whitney to upgrade the fighter’s F135 engine—a widely expected move after Pentagon officials indicated they would do so earlier this year instead of developing an entirely new engine.
The Navy, which awards all F-35 contracts, has awarded deals to Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney for just over $1 billion, covering long-lead parts, F-35 helmets, and F135 engines.
The F-35’s engine may have parts made from contaminated nickel powder, but the risk to the fleet is considered small, the Joint Program Office and Pratt & Whitney said. Inspections of suspect parts have been made for two years.
“The F-35 is the most advanced fighter yet built, but decisions and compromises imposed on it more than a decade ago continue to push up its cost, decrease its reliability, limit its performance, and constrain its ability to exploit new technologies. For fighter pilots of ...
The F-35 Joint Program Office is sticking by its endorsement of Pratt & Whitney’s Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) for the F135 powerplant, saying the improvement will meet all the fighter’s future needs for power. But it declined to weigh in on the increasingly combative war ...
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) thinks the time has come to break this behemoth into more manageable chunks.
It’s hard to know why the F-35 Block 4 upgrade's cost—now $16.5 billion and rising—is going up because it is mixed with the rest of the program, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.
Congress should direct the Pentagon to break out the F-35’s propulsion upgrade from the rest of the program to better to track its scope, schedule, and cost, the Government Accountability Office urged in a new May 30 report. Meanwhile, engine-maker Pratt & Whitney added its ...
Lockheed Martin restarted flying operations at its Fort Worth, Texas, facilities March 6, paving the way for deliveries of F-35s to resume after a nearly three-month hiatus. It's not yet clear when the first new F-35 of 2023 will be delivered.
