Posted on 12/02/2011 10:58:16 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
UPDATE 1-GE, Rolls Royce drop effort to build F35 engines
Dec 2 (Reuters) - General Electric Co and Rolls Royce are dropping their effort to build an alternate engine for Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 joint strike fighter, giving up on what they said could be a $100 billion market.
The decision to end their funding of the project beyond 2011, which the companies announced on Friday, is a boost for United Technologies Corp's Pratt & Whitney unit, which builds the engine used in F-35's early production models.
The Defense Department earlier this year canceled funding for the second engine. That led GE and Rolls Royce to say that they would fund it themselves for the rest of this year and fiscal 2012.
"The decision, reached jointly by GE and Rolls-Royce leadership, recognizes the continued uncertainty in the development and production schedules for the JSF program," the companies said.
GE said the companies spent tens of millions of dollars on the project in 2011. Since 1997, the government handed out about $3 billion for alternate engine development
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
The contract will go to the Chinese
No, GE will ask for the plans to the F119 engine, just like when they had to hand over the plans to the GE F404 Trash Can engine to Pratt to be the 2nd source supplier... As did Williams handing over the plans to the F107 to Teledyne....
Ideally the two companies should have proposed to bear the bulk of the development costs.
With all the production numbers cuts in the F-35 program they might both have ended up in the red if they did that.
Trash can or not, the F-404 is used by 5 different combat aircraft, which is quite an achievement.
Every time I read about the latest F-35 developments I get more depressed. We keep hearing how the F-22 is the last gen, but it was a higher tech supremacy fighter where the F-35 is IN THEORY supposed to be almost as capable but far less expensive to make meaning we can have many more of them and use them to flesh out our “day to day” air power.
Problem is, this development cycle for the F-35 has been an endless disaster of cost overruns and delays.
You have to be brutally honest when looking at this level of military expenditure. From a taxpayer’s perspective on the outside looking in I see this:
The F-22 costs a fortune per aircraft to make, but the production line already exists (though orders are halted and no new aircraft are on order) and they do work. There have been plenty of Red Flag style mock engagements where a squadron of these things brings down everything the world could throw at them.
The F-35 is supposed to replace the F-22 with lower costs and far higher production totals, but we still don’t have any that are really ready for duty and costs continue to skyrocket. Problems producing it are systemic enough that other nations are abandoning orders or considering doing so.
Reading between the lines I have to conclude that the F-35 program is consting us MORE than the F-22 program ever could.
Solution? Reopen the F-22 proction lines, order more of them... then, as quickly and efficiently as governmentally possible, figure out of the F-35 program should be continued to the end or scrapped.
If it needs to be scrapped, then get some more F-18s and A-10s on order to cover our basic air power needs for ten years until we can get something else like an F-35 worked out.
I know, armchair quarterbacking, but the endless stream of “F-35 problems delay... blah blah” tells us everything we really need to know.
No. They used to say the F22 was supposed to replace the F117. Neither is accurate.
The F22 and F35 are supposed to complement each other. Air superiority = F22, CAS = F35. F35 can go into an air combat mode, but not as effectively as an F22.
The F35's advanced avionics suite outstrips the F22 thus necessitating an upgrade to the F22's. Performance wise, F22 is superior.
Think of it this way; F22 is the F15 replacement, F35 is the F16 replacement.
This is a stripped down, paraphrased explanation.
GE knows there is more money being the pimp for the EPA.
Where’s the next John Boyd?
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