F-35 Cancelled, then what ?
Engines - It was a tough call, but made much harder by the tone of P&W's propaganda. The company and its shills repeatedly and quite falsely claimed that the F135 had won multiple competitions against GE, and it's an interesting exercise to search P&W's F135 sites for the word "mature".
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but made much harder by the tone of P&W's propaganda. The company and its shills repeatedly and quite falsely claimed that the F135 had won multiple competitions against GE, and it's an interesting exercise to search P&W's F135 sites for the word "mature".
The people making the decisions on the evaluation side should in theory be smart enough to cut though it.
The program people could have done, but were actually determined to cut the F136 to save short-term money. (Not much of it, compared to the size of the program.) Many people in Congress swallowed the propaganda whole and this killed the debate.
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Engines,
Thanks for your response once again. Relative to this:
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
Thanks for your response once again. Relative to this:
The US decided that they couldn't.
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
Apologies for being a bit behind - I've been traveling and pretty much off line for the last week+ - but I want to add my observations (and I invite Turbine D and Engines to disagree or pile on as they see fit).
First off, over my career in turbine engines I've spent time working with all three - Pratt, GE, and Rolls. As good friend of mine put it before he retired "The worst engine company in the world is the one you're dealing with today".
Due to the relative market share, I've spent the majority of my time the last decade working GE (although I've still spent significant time and effort dealing with Pratt and Rolls). I think the genesis of the problems with the F135 started 25 years ago - when the development began for the 777 EIS engines. At that time, Pratt was already betting heavily on the geared fan concept - as a result the PW4000/112" engine for the 777 was a realtively minor development of the PW4000/94" (767 and 747-400). Meanwhile, GE committed hugely to a totally new engine - the GE90. Since that time, Pratt has continued to pursue their geared fan committment, while paying relatively little attention to the rest of the engine, while GE has continued to incrementally improve all aspects - the fan, compressor, and turbine - and done that to great effect.
GE personnel have told me, pretty much in so many words, that there is little new in the CFM LEAP - they've basically just taken everything that went into the GEnx (and GE90) and scaled it down to CFM size. GE also discovered - rather painfully - during the GEnx program that some of their aero development tools needed some refinement - refinement that has been successfully demonstrated in the GEnx PIP programs.
In short, GE has continued to successfully refine the entire engine technology, while Pratt has let their compressor and turbine technology stagnate while they chased the geared fan holy grail. Something that is all too apparent in their commercial market share where GE/CFM has well over half the market and Pratt is small single digits
Or to put it a bit differently - GE has been able to spread their incremental development costs over a mix of military and commerical engines, while Pratt no longer has a meaningful commerical base
Combined with Pratt's long standing issues with providing a geometrically stable compressor case (something I posted about many pages back), I believe the F135 problems were not just predictable, they were inevitable.
First off, over my career in turbine engines I've spent time working with all three - Pratt, GE, and Rolls. As good friend of mine put it before he retired "The worst engine company in the world is the one you're dealing with today".
Due to the relative market share, I've spent the majority of my time the last decade working GE (although I've still spent significant time and effort dealing with Pratt and Rolls). I think the genesis of the problems with the F135 started 25 years ago - when the development began for the 777 EIS engines. At that time, Pratt was already betting heavily on the geared fan concept - as a result the PW4000/112" engine for the 777 was a realtively minor development of the PW4000/94" (767 and 747-400). Meanwhile, GE committed hugely to a totally new engine - the GE90. Since that time, Pratt has continued to pursue their geared fan committment, while paying relatively little attention to the rest of the engine, while GE has continued to incrementally improve all aspects - the fan, compressor, and turbine - and done that to great effect.
GE personnel have told me, pretty much in so many words, that there is little new in the CFM LEAP - they've basically just taken everything that went into the GEnx (and GE90) and scaled it down to CFM size. GE also discovered - rather painfully - during the GEnx program that some of their aero development tools needed some refinement - refinement that has been successfully demonstrated in the GEnx PIP programs.
In short, GE has continued to successfully refine the entire engine technology, while Pratt has let their compressor and turbine technology stagnate while they chased the geared fan holy grail. Something that is all too apparent in their commercial market share where GE/CFM has well over half the market and Pratt is small single digits
Or to put it a bit differently - GE has been able to spread their incremental development costs over a mix of military and commerical engines, while Pratt no longer has a meaningful commerical base
Combined with Pratt's long standing issues with providing a geometrically stable compressor case (something I posted about many pages back), I believe the F135 problems were not just predictable, they were inevitable.
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tdracer,
Thank you for some insightful and, frankly, welcome analysis there. It's a rare thing and has certainly examined a few perspectives on the -135 saga.
Thank you for some insightful and, frankly, welcome analysis there. It's a rare thing and has certainly examined a few perspectives on the -135 saga.
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tdracer,
I certainly don't want to pile on because you really wrote a good perspective of the engine businesses of GE and P&W. But there are some details of interest I can provide. GE used a building block philosophy in its engine designs. By that they had demonstrator engines to examine new technologies to see if they worked as imagined by the inventors and designers. Some of the technologies that successfully emerged from the demonstrators were put into the F101, F404 and F110 engines. Then, in the mid 1970's, a NASA program was proposed named the Energy Efficient Engine or E3. The idea was to design a new fuel efficient commercial high bypass turbofan as political problems in the Middle East were driving fuel costs up. GE approached this as an overall opportunity, a commercial building block engine, so to speak. GE decided to improve fan, compressor and combustor efficiencies believing they had really good turbine and turbine cooling technologies. It turned out to be a good program for GE. I think P&W concentrated more on turbine technology, particularly on air cooling, DS and SC materials technologies. Brian Rowe was the Leader of GE Aircraft Engines at that time and he hell-bent on overtaking Pratt on both the commercial and military engine fronts. His plan was 4 pronged, emphasizing technology advancements, modernized facilities, providing excellent customer service and establishing international operations.
Things on GE's commercial side of the business were going good, the CF6-6 morphed into the CF6-50 which morphed into the CF6-80A/C. GE's large engine commercial market share rose. One of the real boosts came as a result of a disaster. The TRW airfoil machining plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania burned to the ground and as a result, airfoil machining capacity reduced significantly. At that time, JAL was deciding on an engine for a very large B-747 order. As soon as the rubble from the fire was cool, GE went in retrieved their machining tooling cleaned them all up, replaced whatever parts was damaged and placed the tooling with new machining sources. GE never missed a beat on engine deliveries and spare part requirements. However Pratt was slow to respond to the point JAL had 747's grounded waiting for spares. GE won the JAL order and that firmly put GE in the large commercial engine business.
On the CFM56 engine side of the business, the V2500 came into being as a challenge to GE and SNECMA. So GE decided to build a unducted fan, highly fuel efficient engine demonstrator using the core of the F404 engine. It was the GE37 engine and it demonstrated two important features, big fans produced better efficiencies and composite material blades could enable large fans to be produced without taking a significant weight penalty but the GE37 never made it into the commercial marketplace. So, with Boeing's announced plan to build a long haul two engine aircraft (B-777), GE took the compressor, combustor and fan technology of the E3 and coupled it with the composite material for fan blades, defining what is now the GE90 engine.
If you look at the GE/SNECMA LEAP engines they do contain all the best technologies of the GEnx and GE90 engines with new innovative manufacturing methods used to produce parts.
One of the seemingly most difficult thing to do in engine design is matching the modules to yield the efficiencies both design and computer analysis programs say one should have. For example, you can design a good fan, fan booster and LP turbine, but when they are put together, they don't deliver the advertised performance. And that is true with all of the modules.
but I want to add my observations (and I invite Turbine D and Engines to disagree or pile on as they see fit).
Things on GE's commercial side of the business were going good, the CF6-6 morphed into the CF6-50 which morphed into the CF6-80A/C. GE's large engine commercial market share rose. One of the real boosts came as a result of a disaster. The TRW airfoil machining plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania burned to the ground and as a result, airfoil machining capacity reduced significantly. At that time, JAL was deciding on an engine for a very large B-747 order. As soon as the rubble from the fire was cool, GE went in retrieved their machining tooling cleaned them all up, replaced whatever parts was damaged and placed the tooling with new machining sources. GE never missed a beat on engine deliveries and spare part requirements. However Pratt was slow to respond to the point JAL had 747's grounded waiting for spares. GE won the JAL order and that firmly put GE in the large commercial engine business.
On the CFM56 engine side of the business, the V2500 came into being as a challenge to GE and SNECMA. So GE decided to build a unducted fan, highly fuel efficient engine demonstrator using the core of the F404 engine. It was the GE37 engine and it demonstrated two important features, big fans produced better efficiencies and composite material blades could enable large fans to be produced without taking a significant weight penalty but the GE37 never made it into the commercial marketplace. So, with Boeing's announced plan to build a long haul two engine aircraft (B-777), GE took the compressor, combustor and fan technology of the E3 and coupled it with the composite material for fan blades, defining what is now the GE90 engine.
If you look at the GE/SNECMA LEAP engines they do contain all the best technologies of the GEnx and GE90 engines with new innovative manufacturing methods used to produce parts.
One of the seemingly most difficult thing to do in engine design is matching the modules to yield the efficiencies both design and computer analysis programs say one should have. For example, you can design a good fan, fan booster and LP turbine, but when they are put together, they don't deliver the advertised performance. And that is true with all of the modules.
Do a Hover - it avoids G
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The basic problem?
When one is a customer, from private individual to Government, and in the market for the very latest high tech product (F135 in this thread but the arguement applies in many circumstances) then I don’t see how the customer can know as much about the product as those developing and building it. So how can the customer tell if the supplier is telling the whole truth or even make a valid risk assessment themselves?
If the customer must have the product, then in my simplistic and perhaps naive view, the only real protection a customer can have is two suppliers in competition.
When one is a customer, from private individual to Government, and in the market for the very latest high tech product (F135 in this thread but the arguement applies in many circumstances) then I don’t see how the customer can know as much about the product as those developing and building it. So how can the customer tell if the supplier is telling the whole truth or even make a valid risk assessment themselves?
If the customer must have the product, then in my simplistic and perhaps naive view, the only real protection a customer can have is two suppliers in competition.
Not for the first time.
To be really naive, you would only need one supplier (post development competition) if that supplier were doing their honest best for the Nation (plus allies) as well as making a reasonable profit.
But then you'd also need as the customer an honest Government doing its best for the Nation too.
But then you'd also need as the customer an honest Government doing its best for the Nation too.
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Originally Posted by Fox3WheresMyBanana
To be really naive, you would only need one supplier (post development competition) if that supplier were doing their honest best for the Nation (plus allies) as well as making a reasonable profit.
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LO,
Spot on. To some large extent, the DoD operates on a 'command and control' system, where defence companies pretty much do as they are told, and 'build to print' once their designs are approved.
DoD has been trying to change away from this, basically because even the US cannot afford the massive costs of the bureaucracy involved in doing all that commanding and controlling. This has led to many 'defence acquisition transformations) that have had varying degrees of success.
In some ways, F-35 is just another of the attempts. As I've posted earlier, some of the ideas have worked, some haven't.
Bit it does mean that when countries like the UK buy a US sourced piece of kit, US companies are unused, ill equipped and usually plain unwilling to provide the level of 'performance underwriting' that UK companies are used to. Plus the ever present issue of US ITAR regulations being used to preserve the US technological lead.
These issues can, and do, lead to problems when buying from the US. Rivet Joint's a decent example. Unfortunately, very few Uk MoD acquisition personnel are fully aware of the risks involved. I hope that those people currently advocating a direct Apache buy from Boeing have got all those issues fully 'risk costed'.
But I bet they haven't.
Best regards as ever to those having to deal with Uncle Sam,
Engines
Spot on. To some large extent, the DoD operates on a 'command and control' system, where defence companies pretty much do as they are told, and 'build to print' once their designs are approved.
DoD has been trying to change away from this, basically because even the US cannot afford the massive costs of the bureaucracy involved in doing all that commanding and controlling. This has led to many 'defence acquisition transformations) that have had varying degrees of success.
In some ways, F-35 is just another of the attempts. As I've posted earlier, some of the ideas have worked, some haven't.
Bit it does mean that when countries like the UK buy a US sourced piece of kit, US companies are unused, ill equipped and usually plain unwilling to provide the level of 'performance underwriting' that UK companies are used to. Plus the ever present issue of US ITAR regulations being used to preserve the US technological lead.
These issues can, and do, lead to problems when buying from the US. Rivet Joint's a decent example. Unfortunately, very few Uk MoD acquisition personnel are fully aware of the risks involved. I hope that those people currently advocating a direct Apache buy from Boeing have got all those issues fully 'risk costed'.
But I bet they haven't.
Best regards as ever to those having to deal with Uncle Sam,
Engines
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The supplier is solely intent on doing what's best for its shareholders by attempting to make massive profits. End of story.
This is capitalism 2015.
This is capitalism 2015.
Blame the people who stuff up the contracts and decision makers etc. Not the people doing their job.
What are we saying here, large companies should go, "Oh sh!t, there DOD are incompetent, we'll make a loss and wipe their @rse for them".
We know what the nature of the beast is, deal with it.
Nitro - The Pentagon economy resembles socialism much more than it resembles free-market capitalism.
We as a society have to find incremental improvements as things go forward, supposedly more bang for buck, all whilst under the constraints of changing societal expectations.
The whole F35 thing appears to be nothing more than a swiss cheese incident. Or a perfect Storm.
Like many things we have tried too many things in one go. Technology integration, try and average out its capabilities for every task, and then change the way we approached the project sourcing and procurement system. Combine all that with our usual bureaucratic bungling and this what you get.
The change in procurement and sourcing/project system, was probably going to be a elephant in the room anyway, so doing it on the F35 project appears to be insanity.
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Perhaps the only advantage of getting old is that one has more experience to draw on.
During the mid 1940s a Spitfire cost £5000. Less than 10 years later the Hunter cost £250,000. Plus when you fired the guns the Hunter’s engine stopped. You can imagine what some people thought about this at the time.
I have taken an interest in military aircraft procurement from then to the present and watched (not just in the UK) throughout this period the trend of unexpected costs, issues of introducing immature technology and contract problems. The only exception to this generalisation that I have noticed was the RAF Hawk – and there were special reasons why this did not follow some aspects of the trend.
Forgive me if I can’t share some people’s excitement at the F-35 events of today.
During the mid 1940s a Spitfire cost £5000. Less than 10 years later the Hunter cost £250,000. Plus when you fired the guns the Hunter’s engine stopped. You can imagine what some people thought about this at the time.
I have taken an interest in military aircraft procurement from then to the present and watched (not just in the UK) throughout this period the trend of unexpected costs, issues of introducing immature technology and contract problems. The only exception to this generalisation that I have noticed was the RAF Hawk – and there were special reasons why this did not follow some aspects of the trend.
Forgive me if I can’t share some people’s excitement at the F-35 events of today.