House Panel Wants Second JSF Engine

Posted on: Apr. 27th, 2006 || Source: armedservices.house.gov | E-mail Article | Print Article

House Panel Wants Second JSF Engine

Yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee's tacair panel proposed to add $408 million to the 2007 defense budget to sustain the Joint Strike Fighter alternate engine program.
The panel believes that having an alternate engine will bring significant savings and offer improved performance and maintainability.

The alternate engine program was cut earlier this year to save around $2.4 billion. The Panel however, pointed out that "the engine competition that resulted from the alternative fighter engine program for the F-15 and F-16 fighters resulted in an estimated savings of approximately $4 billion in life cycle costs -- a 21 percent savings -- as well as improved reliability and maintainability for both competing engines."

"Fighter engines cost around $10 million each. With the current planned purchase of up to nearly 3,100 F-35s and the likelihood of as many as 4500-6,000 engines being required to support the F-35 over its lifetime, it does not take significant savings through a competitive program to recoup the initial R&D investment. These savings would be in addition to improved performance, reliability, maintainability, and technical innovation expected through
competitive versus sole source contracts."

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