Engines,
Thanks for your response once again. Relative to this:
The US decided that they couldn't.
Actually, the F135 selection was a follow on to what would be the F119/F120 engine contest for the F-22 fighter. Pratt made it known it would shut down their military engine operations outside of West Palm Beach, Florida if they were not selected as the engine of choice, i.e., the F119. During the early evaluations of both engines, I happened to be on a night flight to West Palm Beach for the purpose of playing golf for a week. The plane was dark and the person next to me had the laptop out reading mail. The person worked for P&W, it was obvious. It is hard
not to look at a laptop screen lighting up the surrounding neighborhood at night. One email received listed all the problems being experienced on the F119 engine and if there were solutions identified or
TBD. There were quite a few, more
TBD than identified, several pages matter of fact. It didn't matter, Pratt won the contest. The alarm bells rang loud and clear at the Pentagon, an important supplier was leaving the business unless…
When the F-22 got cancelled with few being built verses what suppliers were counting on, the Pentagon "What will we do without two viable engine suppliers?" exercise went through the rigors one more time to assure Pratt remained in business.
If you want to know, the GE F136 engine had some features the Pratt engine didn't that added very modest additional weight and complexity, but provided better fuel efficiency, better high altitude performance, thrust growth potential beyond what the F135 is capable of, as we now know, while paving the way for the next generation engine. In fact this technology is now being fully developed for the next generation engine through the ADVENT program. The DoD reasoned, with the external message being, they wanted a simple proven derivative engine that performed without problems and the F135 was that engine, internally the message was, they wanted two engine suppliers.
So when it came to the F-35 Program, it wasn't that the US couldn't afford it, e.g. two competing engines, it was they couldn't afford losing Pratt as a supplier of military engines, simple as that…
TD