Air Warfare, Congress, Pentagon

Pratt blasts Lockheed’s ‘confusing and misleading’ adaptive engine advocacy (Exclusive)

This report was updated 6/23/23 at 6:23pm ET to include a new statement from the Pentagon’s Joint Program Office.

PARIS — For the past two decades, F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin and F135 engine producer Pratt & Whitney have been tied together in a marriage over the fifth-generation fighter. But every marriage hits a rocky point, and a recent fight over the future of the engine has lifted tensions to a shockingly public level.

In a Wednesday interview with Breaking Defense, Greg Ulmer, Lockheed’s executive vice president of aeronautics, publicly backed the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) as an alternative engine for the F-35. The position seemed to catch Pratt off guard, dealing a blow to the company’s — and the Pentagon’s — stated approach for upgrading the legacy F135 engine and seemingly boosting GE Aerospace, which has been pushing for an adaptive engine option. 

In comments to Breaking Defense hours later, senior executives from Pratt made it clear that they disagreed with Ulmer’s assessment — and that they feel betrayed by the Lockheed executive’s decision to go public with his comments.

Hitting back at Lockheed’s advocacy for AETP, Pratt executives accused the world’s largest defense contractor of attempting to “delay or stop” the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, arguing that the aerospace giant is seeking greater “longevity” on the F-35 line that would distract from or defeat the purpose of a new, sixth-generation fighter. They also challenged Ulmer’s assertions of power and cooling needs for upcoming upgrades to the Joint Strike Fighter.

Jen Latka, Pratt’s F135 program chief, called Ulmer’s statements “very confusing and misleading.”

“Lockheed proposing AETP for the F-35 undermines the customer, the taxpayer and the warfighter,” said Jeff Shockey, senior vice president of global government relations for RTX, Pratt’s parent company. “Once again, they are trying to pull a fast one on Congress, the Pentagon and the taxpayer, at the expense of the warfighter.”

In response, Lockheed spokeswoman Laura Siebert told Breaking Defense that “Lockheed Martin’s top priority remains meeting the needs of our service men and women.”

It’s rare for fights between industrial partners to boil out into the public, but Pratt’s reactions to Ulmer’s comments indicate a long-simmering issue that finally came out.  

Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with AeroDynamic Advisory, told Breaking Defense he was surprised to see disagreements between the partners explode into the open.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Public disagreements between a prime and a major program partner are highly ill-advised, for so many reasons,” Aboulafia said. “Even in Europe, where there tend to be many more intra-program clashes, you don’t see too many public displays of rancor like this.”

For its part, the Pentagon’s Joint Program Office provided a statement Friday to Breaking Defense, saying the office “stands behind our in-depth business case analysis, conducted in partnership with industry, that helped inform DoD’s decision to move forward with the F135 Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) and Power & Thermal Management System (PTMS) upgrade for the F-35.”

“The ECU and PTMS modernization effort restores engine life and will meet the Services’ and international partners’ budgetary, cooling and power requirements,” the statement says. “This will ensure the F-35’s propulsion system is prepared for future demands that will be necessary to stay ahead of our near-peer adversaries.”

A Clash Over Next-Gen Fighters

Among their most pointed comments, Pratt execs indicated a belief that Ulmer’s stance — which would set up a contest between Pratt and GE over the next-gen engine — is part of a larger campaign by Lockheed to delay, or end overall, the Pentagon’s plans for the NGAD program. That effort is expected to select a contractor next year for a jet that could eat into the F-35’s buy.  

“Lockheed Martin is attempting to keep the F-35 as relevant and as capable as possible for longevity reasons,” Latka said. “It’s clear they want to delay or stop the sixth-gen competition.”

As Pratt’s line of reasoning would suggest, incorporating advanced capabilities into the F-35 could theoretically push back a need to field a sixth-gen fighter, two priorities that would crowd out each other’s budget space. If Lockheed wins the NGAD contract, that may not be a concern, but if Lockheed loses, it could become a grave threat to the company’s bottom line. 

Though the two officials claimed Lockheed might be setting up the Joint Strike Fighter to evolve beyond its fifth-gen baseline, they still suggested the real capability improvements would not be sufficient to truly meet the needs of next-gen requirements. 

“No one is denying or debating the value of adaptive motors that were designed as part of the AETP technology demonstration program. They get more fuel efficiency, which translates to either fuel savings or range,” Latka said. “Adaptive engines would get you additional nautical miles on the F-35, but the range needed for the sixth-gen mission requires two engines, not one.”

Although he announced the decision not to move forward with AETP as part of the fiscal 2024 budget release, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has previously expressed some reservations about the decision, telling the McAleese Defense Programs conference in March that it’s a call he “worr[ies] about a little bit.” In a subsequent scrum with reporters, Kendall acknowledged an adaptive engine’s potential for unlocking greater capability for the fighter, such as increased range and fuel efficiency, and underscored that the ECU approach would ensure the F-35 program is “not going to be able to introduce competition as effectively.” The AETP decision, he said, was an “affordability question.” 

“It’s not surprising that Lockheed is attempting to turn the F-35 into a sixth-gen fighter, which it will never be,” Shockey argued. “The F-35 and NGAD have separate and distinct missions. Lockheed is trying to negate the need for a sixth-gen fighter competition to extend the longevity of their contract.

“Maybe their goal isn’t to have a sixth-gen platform at all and simply turn the F-35 into something that’s close enough. But that doesn’t meet the future mission’s needs. The F-35 is a great aircraft, but it’s not a Swiss army knife that can do any mission under the sun. All Pentagon analysis shows that a sixth-generation fighter is needed to stay ahead of advancing near-peer threats in the INDOPACOM region,” Shockey added.

Disagreements Over Needs, Capabilities For Future F-35s

At the center of Ulmer’s reasoning for backing AETP are his claims that the F135, even with the planned Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) and upgraded Power and Thermal Management System (PTMS), will not provide the same margin for growth as can be offered by an adaptive engine. Further, Ulmer reasoned, an adaptive engine itself paves the way to improved performance. 

“So you get the benefit of new capability in terms of power and cooling. But you also get aircraft performance improvement with AETP,” the Lockheed exec said. “I’m thinking broader. I’m thinking longer-term.”

Latka pushed back on Ulmer’s claims, insisting that the dual ECU/PTMS modernization effort would provide all the margin for power and cooling that the Joint Strike Fighter needs.

“If you don’t do anything to the PTMS systems, ECU fully enables Block 4. If you upgrade the PTMS system, you get so much margin you will never need another engine upgrade for power and cooling reasons. Whether it’s 2060, 2070 or 2080. There’s extensive margin to meet any and all future needs,” she said. (The F-35 Joint Program Office told Breaking Defense on Monday that the dual PTMS/ECU modernization effort is expected to be fielded by 2030.)

Latka further highlighted the cost of the engine to foreign partners, as well as the unpredictability of exporting an adaptive engine — highly sensitive technology that represents the most advanced jet propulsion in the world. 

“I don’t think any of us can comment on whether in 10 or 15 years from now the US would agree to export AETP technology, but it would take a long time to get it to be exportable. The issue our international partners have with AETP for the F-35 is that it’s going to increase their costs significantly, regardless of whether it’s exportable,” she said. (Latka announced earlier this year that the ECU is supported by the current export authorization framework that governs foreign sales.)  

In response to the Pratt executives, Siebert, the Lockheed spokeswoman, said “We stand ready to support and continue to work with the U.S. government on the capability and performance upgrades that best support their requirements for the F-35 for decades to come — including an engine upgrade. AETP technologies deliver more power and greater cooling capability, which is required as we modernize the F-35 beyond Block 4.”

As Ulmer acknowledged, fielding AETP and ECU would require additional sustainment infrastructure. Latka characterized that need as the leading cost driver for the adaptive engine effort, beyond the price tag for fielding the engine itself. 

“The major cost driver here is the tens of BILLIONS of dollars in a duplicative sustainment infrastructure a second engine would require. Managing two totally different engine programs would require doubling the number of support equipment, doubling the number of facilities, doubling the number of engineering teams, and that’s what really drives the excessive cost increases. You can’t be flippant about these costs,” she said. 

“Lockheed wants to overturn the Pentagon’s decision, regardless of the cost to the taxpayer,” said Shockey. “Lockheed wants to put an unproven adaptive engine on the F-35, regardless of the price tag, and that’s going to delay delivering critical capabilities to the warfighter in an urgent time of need. Proposing AETP for the F-35 undermines the DoD’s decision to upgrade the F135 engine after exhaustive studies that have proven it’s the only reasonable option going forward.”

Next year, the F-35 program is expected to formalize its requirements for power and cooling through the aircraft’s service life. Lawmakers such as Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., in a recent interview with Breaking Defense, have described fleshing out those requirements as critical to make a fully informed decision on the best solution for powering the Joint Strike Fighter. 

It’s unclear how this fraying relationship between Lockheed and Pratt will impact the future of the F-35 program. But what is certain is that a seemingly major rift has opened between the airframe and engine primes for the most important fighter in the West — and whether the two parties can mend their relationship remains an open question.