lastly, the arguement for competition is again smoke and mirrors… anyone in the business knows the term “breakout vendor”… the military in its development process requires the OEM to develop muliple sources for a lot of the hardware specifically so they can go direct to the sources and compete in the small business marketplace thereby bypassing the OEM for spares.. that is where the competition reduced the cost of these weapons systems.. so anyone saying that giving P&W this engine contract will be giving it a monopoly is simply smoke and mirrors to the “un-informed masses”.

So I say.. we taxpayers should be pushing our congressional members to put our money in 1 really really good engine design and let the DOD manage the competition in the small business market place just liek they do on all their current propulsion programs.. our military desrves the best…

additionally, those “in the business” know that the manufacturing processes in use today and the methodology of risk management in use by the US military’s aviation (to which I am very familiar with the USAF’s Director of Propulsion’s risk management process under Air Force Instruction 21–104) manages their fleet (with the active participation of the OEMs and incorportating Military/contractor risk management processes such as visual, borescopes, and NDI processes) to such a low risk that the probability of an issue developing into the arguements being used is purely “praying to the ignorance” of those that are not aware of how the military manages risk and as such is pure smoke and mirrors. And that is why Congress should not toss aside Bill Gates, the USN, USAF, and the USMC’s comments as if they have no basis for their position.

I don’t care much which engine vendor does what but the absense of facts on these topics by no-nothings really gets annoying.

The document is good reading for a number of reasons. Just as interesting is what it has to say about the alternate engine controversy for the F-35.

“6.2.2 The Participants may designate the F135, the F136, or both in their PPRs in such quantities and in accordance with such delivery schedules as they require.”

For the half-wits that refuse to educate themselves on this topic, the first thing to do is to have this document changed. Once that is done then you can cancel it. OR– look like the U.S. is going back on a promise to all of the international partners.

The Defense Department wants to earmark over $100 billion for one contractor for the next 30–40 years. Members of Congress aren’t elected for life and have to justify their positions to their constituents every two years – but it is just fine to have the Defense Department earmark over $100 billion for 30–40 years to one contractor?

Secretary Gates’ statement is totally contrary to statute and the Pentagon’s own acquisition policies and directives — The Competition in Contracting Act (section 2304 of title 10, United States Code) requires competition in contracting and section 202 of the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009 requires acquisition strategies to ensure competition throughout the life cycle of a weapon system

• Secretary Carter, March 24, 2010: “Pratt & Whitney [Current provider of F-35 engine] was awarded a non-competitive SDD [final research and development phase for the F-35, which is scheduled to end in 2016] contract [meaning there was no competition] for the [F-35] F135 propulsion system [in 2001].”

ABC: Secretary Gates video clip from May 20, 2010: “Only in Washington does a proposal where everybody wins [is] considered a competition, where everybody is guaranteed a piece of the action at the end.”

The most senior civilian acquisition official in the Department of Defense, July 2009: “These costs [on the primary F-35 engine] are outside the bounds of Selected Acquisition Report projections, and I am concerned about continued cost growth in the F135.”

The Director of the F-35 Program Office, June 2009: “The Pentagon needs to carefully consider the operational risk of having just one engine for the F-35 fighter jet…competition could bring faster technology development and lower costs…a single engine could be worrisome if an engine problem ever grounded the fighters…In the past, having a variety of fighters meant the Pentagon could use other planes to offset any groundings, like an 11– month engine-related halt in Harriers in 2000…I simply think that we’ve focused too much on the discussion about cost benefit and not the operational risk benefit.”

ABC: GE lost out in original competition.

The sentence should open as: “The GE F110-GE-400…” and close as: “…being based on the F110-GE-100.”

The GE F110 had the benefit of being introduced later than the F100 in 1987 on the F-14B and had the added benefit of being based on the F101-GE-100. The F101 was originally introduced on the B-1 in 1970 as the YF101 and eventually became the F101-GE-102 in 1984. The delays in the B-1 program meant there was more time to refine the YF101. The F-16 variant, the F110-GE-100 was tested in 1984 for the Alternative Fighter Engine program, competing with the F100-PW-220/220E. So the F100-GE-400 was a more mature design.

A more fair comparison would be between the F100-PW-100 and the YF101, and then the F100-PW-220 (introduced in 1986) to the F110-GE-400.

A well researched diatribe on the F135. Just a few things we should clarify in your comments.

“The F135 Engine has already accumulated almost 14,000 hours of testing vs. only 200 hrs for the F136. The DoD itself says “A direct comparison shows that the F-136 Initial Service Release (ISR) dates are at least 2–3 years behind the F-135 ISR dates.”

A: I would certainly hope that the F135 has more hours on the test bench considering that the development costs are almost twice that of the F136. The initial cost of the F135 skyrocketed from 4.3 billion in the 2001 contract, to the present staggering sum of 7.3 billion dollars today. This price increase is a $2.5 billion higher than the $1.9 billion overrun reported last year. In fact, the F135 overrun is about the same as than the SDD bill for the F136 (thank you Bill Sweetman). Yes, P&W have done such a wonderful job of saving the taxpayers money up to this point! And we are going to reward this piss poor project management, with a signed and sealed contract so that they can be in fat city for the next 30 years? Sound like a winning formula (for P&W) to me.

“And by the way, how are you going to do a comparison of the F135 ISR production engine (which by week’s end will have flown on ALL three service variants”.

A; Its always amusing to hear talk about a projected flight test schedule for the JSF. Which of the 15+ test flight schedules that have been floating around since 2001 are you talking about? And by the way, running an engine on a test bench is quite a bit different then flying it in an airframe, right? And since we are only something like 4000+ test flights short of knowing how the F135 will operate in this airframe, I’d say that there’s plenty of time for us to test the F136.

Overall, your comments while technically correct on the surface, have quite a shrill sound, kind of like someone who is trying to sell me a bad used car.

You either forget or didn’t know that the PW TF30 was originally designed for the older generation F-111. The TF30 was used on the F-14A because the GE F110 engine wasn’t ready yet by the time the F-14 entered production. So of course the PW TF30 engine hurt the F-14.… it’s a generation difference in technology.

Anyways, the Pratt engines have served the F-15’s well (once they moved on from the –100 to the –220 and –229) and F-22’s well. The F-16’s having only one single engine benefited greatly from the additional output of the GE F110 engine.