Battle over the second engine for the US’ JSF F-35 Lightning II continues unabated

Amid continuing Congressional support and Presidential veto threats, the battle over the second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) F-35 Lightning II continues to rage unabated. As more and more players from the Capitol Hill and the industry get ensnared into the web of debate, each side is accusing the other of a disinformation war about their engine’s cost, performance, and even the relevance to be on the scene. It is now five years in the running that Pentagon’s continuing decision of not pursuing with the F-136 alternate engine development programme is being turned on its head with the Congress keeping the programme alive by adding money each year.

To redux, several engines were studied in the initial phases of what became the JSF programme. However, when it came to building the concept of a demonstrator aircraft, prudence demanded that the competing teams be directed to use the only suitable engine then available—Pratt & Whitney’s F119. While this led to both Boeing and Lockheed Martin proposing JSF designs powered by F119 derivatives, the Pentagon in their calculations had planned for competitive engine procurement from the outset and funded work on the F-136 in parallel with development of the F-35 and F135 (derived from F-119 fitted on the USAF’s F-22 Raptor air-dominance fighter). The plan was to complete development of the F-35 with the Pratt & Whitney (P&W) F-135 as its power plant, as the F-16 had with the F-100, and then introduce competition with the General Electric/Rolls-Royce (GE/R-R) F136 engine. Accordingly, all initial F-35s were to be powered by the P&W F-135 engines, but after 2010, the engine contracts were planned to be competitively tendered from Lot 6 onwards.

In keeping with the above philosophy, while P&W took the lead in the F135 engine development, the GE/R-R combine also started receiving funds from 1996 onwards to start the development of their F136 engine. The GE/R-R Fighter Engine team was formally created in July 2002 (a 60:40 joint venture), with the responsibility for developing the F136 ‘interchangeable’ engine for the JSF. The F136 development programme commenced with complete earnestness and by July 2004, the F-136 had begun full engine runs at the GE’s Evendale, Ohio facility. In August 2005, the US Department of Defence (DOD) awarded the GE/R-R team a $2.4 billion (Rs 11,200 crore) contract for the system development and demonstration (SDD) phase of the F136 initiative, scheduled to run until 2013.