U.S. House Members Plan to Save GE-Rolls F-35 Fighter Engine
Senior U.S. House members are planning to try to revive an alternative engine being developed for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter by General Electric Co. (GE) and Rolls- Royce Group Plc.
The Defense Department last month terminated the second engine, which it says is unneeded and wasteful spending. Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (UTX), is the primary engine supplier for Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)’s F-35.
The House Armed Services Committee this week is writing the 2012 defense authorization bill, which will set military policy and funding targets for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.
Representative Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican who leads the panel’s air and land forces subcommittee, proposed today as part of the bill to limit money spent on improving the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter engine unless the secretary of defense makes funds available for “two options” for the F-35 propulsion system. His panel is scheduled to debate the proposal tomorrow.
General Electric and Rolls-Royce have been building an alternative engine, known as the F136. The Pentagon issued a “notice of termination” to the two companies on April 25 because Congress didn’t include funding in the fiscal 2011 budget.
President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have opposed the development of the second engine.
‘Self-Fund’ Program
Reinstating the terminated GE-Rolls Royce program would entail having the companies fund the work themselves for at least the remainder of 2011 and during 2012, according to GE Aviation spokesman Rick Kennedy.
“We expect that we are going to be asked to self-fund the program for 2011 and 2012, and we are prepared to do that,” Kennedy said in a telephone interview. “It is going to require significant commitment from us.”
The House Armed Services Committee chairman, California Republican Representative Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, said he would seek to keep the second engine alive. Like McKeon, Bartlett also supports the development of a backup engine for the F-35.
The funding limitation targets improvements to the F-35 engine’s thrust and seeks to inject competition between two makers if the Defense Department decides to spend money to make changes to the primary engine.
Gates has said that completing development of the alternative engine would cost taxpayers $3 billion. GE disputes that figure, saying the development cost would be about $1 billion, with an additional $800 million to start production.
No Money Included
The House voted in February to strip $450 million for the second engine from the fiscal 2011 Pentagon spending bill -- a first for the lower chamber, which previously had supported the project.
For two years in a row, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee haven’t included money for the additional engine in their versions of the defense authorization and appropriations bills.
The chairmen of those panels, Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, both back the second engine. They have said that they didn’t include funding because the Senate has enough votes to remove it from the defense bills.
GE rose 16 cents today to $20.64 in New York composite trading.
-- Editors: Robin Meszoly, Leslie Hoffecker
To contact the reporter on this story: Roxana Tiron in Washington at rtiron@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net.
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