{"id":191285,"date":"2009-09-06T06:14:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-06T11:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/06\/on-the-f135-f136-debate\/"},"modified":"2009-09-06T06:14:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-06T11:14:00","slug":"on-the-f135-f136-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/06\/on-the-f135-f136-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"On the F135\/F136 Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, we have Pratt & Whitney talking to the press about how very serious they are about containing costs<\/a>, even though the latest estimate shows that its price will increase to $8.3M an engine, up from $6.7 million in the most recent DoD estimate. (H\/T ELP Defens(c)e Blog<\/a>)<\/p>\n

People who cover defense for a living are noting that also there is no real indicator of a cost savings by killing the F-136<\/a>, it just saves a few pennies now<\/span> at the expense of a few dollars later<\/span>.<\/p>\n

In any case, the DoD is in full “cover your ass” mode with Secdef Gates telling Program Executive Officer, General David Heinz, to sit down and shut up<\/a>, because he is being too forthcoming about potential benefits.<\/p>\n

We also have dueling consultants on Aviation Week’s Ares weblog, with retired general Michael Hough<\/a> (GE-Rolls Royce), dsaying that there was never a competition between the engines, and retired general Mike Loh<\/a> (P&W) claiming that the bidders in the program competed the engines and selected the F136.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, General Loh is lying. The bidders for the JSF, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and McDonnell-Douglas, never competed the engines, they simply selected an engine<\/span> for the prototypes, and since the F119, the basis of the F135 engine was already in production<\/span>, they deemed it more mature for the prototype effort<\/span>. (see also
here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

It should be noted that the competition is already saving money for the government<\/a>, as P&W is now offering a fixed price for the first 100 of their engines, in response to the GE-Rolls Royce fixed price offer.<\/p>\n

BTW, as to the idea that P&W has their sh%$ together in regard to cost and performance? Maybe not, because the government is sending a team of fixers to evaluate the progam<\/a>, a good indication of cost and schedule problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, we have Pratt & Whitney talking to the press about how very serious they are about containing costs, even though the latest estimate shows that its price will increase to $8.3M an engine, up from $6.7 million in the most recent DoD estimate. (H\/T ELP Defens(c)e Blog) People who cover defense for a living …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1010,1008,1128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-bureaucracy","category-defense-procurement","category-propulsion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}