It’s official: The F-35 will not get a new engine anytime soon
After rancorous debate, a new engine for the stealth fighter was already in doubt, but legislation released by congressional appropriators today seemingly puts the issue to rest.
After rancorous debate, a new engine for the stealth fighter was already in doubt, but legislation released by congressional appropriators today seemingly puts the issue to rest.
“Now that we understand that 80 kilowatts is a must-have, it was the mission of: how do we get there, with the lowest impact to the overall airframe?” Honeywell Aerospace’s Matt Milas told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview.
Across the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, the Pentagon will purchase 21 fewer fighter jets than originally expected for the 2025 fiscal year, dropping a planned buy of 107 to 86.
“We're very, very fixated on being competitive with the pacing challenge [of China],” said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. “I think the budget that we've submitted moves us forward — not quite as fast as we would like to, but it moves us forward in the right direction while maintaining current capabilities that are essential to the nation.”
The designation marks the first time that a stealth fighter can carry a nuclear weapon, in this case the B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb.
COVID-19 stalled defense programs, so money moves from last year to this, giving Singapore defense spending a single year bump of over 12 percent.
Recently confirmed Gen. Jim Slife pledged to work on sharing data not only inside the Air Force but with his counterparts at the other armed services.
The move would set up the Singapore Air Force to join a small group of countries that operate both the A and B variants of the stealth fighter.
A total of 20 programs, including F-35 fighter jets to future Hunter-class frigates, face a combined 38 years of procurement delays, according to a new government report.
“Like all programs, the continuing resolution has the potential to have an impact. We have not worked through all the details if we had a sequestration scenario,” Pratt & Whitney's Jennifer Latka said about a stalled budget on Capitol Hill. “What I know now is that our schedule is on track, that we have identified funding to continue, and that’s not to say that that situation cannot change.”
In a tour of Collins Aerospace's facilities, executives said their new thermal management solution for the F-35 achieved a key benchmark, though the Pentagon hasn't yet decided on a competition at all.
As many as 120 F-35s could be “undelivered” in 2024 as a result of delays with the stealth fighter's Technology Refresh 3 upgrade, according to Lockheed Martin Chief Financial Officer Jay Malave.
"How in the hell do you lose an F-35?"
A wide-ranging hearing on the F-35 revealed new details on the aircraft’s current operations, as well as its developmental struggles, including its beleaguered TR-3 upgrade.
"What we found is that systems that are heavily reliant on contractor support, that have a minimum of government-owned intellectual property or access to the intellectual property, that the flexibility to make changes in accordance with a new national security environment is limited," Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Lowman told Breaking Defense.