U.S. Air Force Maj. Kristin “BEO” Wolfe, F-35A Lightning II Demonstration Team pilot and commander, performs for F-135 engine maintainers assigned to the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex, at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., May 25, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sergeant Thomas Barley)
Updated 12:03 pm ET 3/9/23 with engine figures provided by the JPO.
AIR WARFARE SYMPOSIUM — The F-35 Joint Program Office and Pratt & Whitney have finalized the lot 15-17 contract for the stealth fighter’s F135 engines, reaching an agreement that could top out around $8 billion, Breaking Defense has learned.
The contract award is officially worth nearly $5.2 billion and covers 278 lot 15 and 16 engines, according to JPO spokesman Russ Goemaere. But it comes with an option for lot 17 that Goemaere said the government plans to exercise in the spring, which could raise it to the $8 billion figure.
The lot 15-17 deal was originally awarded using a mechanism called an undefinitized contract action (UCA) in June 2022, a placeholder arrangement to start production as Pratt and the JPO worked to formally iron out details like prices. The UCA with a nearly $4.4 billion ceiling started work on 152 F135-PW-100 engines — 108 for the Air Force’s conventional takeoff F-35As, 15 for the Marines Corps and 29 for the Navy’s carrier-launched F-35C jets. The JPO additionally ordered 26 F135-PW-600 engines for short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) on F-35Bs, spare powerplants and a STOVL engine for Block 4 flight tests. (The UCA awarded $2.9 billion when it was issued, which is rolled into the finalized contract.)
Goemaere said the full contract was concluded Jan. 26 for a total of 278 engines. It features 140 F135-PW-100 engines for the military services – 100 for the Air Force, 27 for the Navy and 13 for the Marines Corps. It also includes 26 STOVL engines for Marine F-35Bs, 58 CTOL and 10 STOVL engines for non-US partners and 27 CTOL and 7 STOVL engines for FMS customers. The contract additionally procures five CTOL spares, 4 STOVL spares and the Block 4 test engine.
According to Goemaere, the lot 17 option will award an additional $2.3 billion to Pratt for 140 more powerplants.
Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, said in a statement that the total value of the contract with the lot 17 option is approximately $8 billion, which would fund “over 418 F135 engines.”
“This marks a major milestone for the program,” Jen Latka, vice president for the F135 program, said in a statement. “This contract award enables us to continue delivering critical 5th Generation propulsion capability to the warfighter at a fair and reasonable cost for the taxpayer,” she added.
In a virtual roundtable with reporters on Feb. 28, Latka said that new hardware is being incorporated into production to address a vibration issue in the fighter’s engine, known as harmonic resonance, that officials recently discovered during the investigation into the crash of an F-35B in December. That inquiry, led by Naval Air Systems Command, is still working to establish the root cause of the mishap.
Following the crash, the Pentagon grounded an undisclosed number of fighters and paused acceptance of new F135 powerplants. Engine deliveries restarted Feb. 24 after officials said they developed a mitigation strategy for the vibration problem, though grounded jets were not yet cleared to fly.
On March 2, the JPO ordered the global Joint Strike Fighter enterprise to retrofit existing jets with the new hardware, which the office said would also allow grounded fighters to resume operations.
The JPO said installing the new hardware is an “inexpensive” and “non-intrusive” process that requires four to eight hours of work, though it did not provide the specific cost.
