F136 survives House Vote

F136 survives House Vote: A showdown with the

Senate is now looming after the House’s approval yesterday of its version of the Fiscal 2010 defense appropriation bill that includes $560 million for the F136 engine, the competing powerplant to Pratt & Whitney’s F135 for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. The House vote for its $636 billion spending legislation was 400 to 30. The Senate, which passed its defense authorization bill on July 23 without money for the alternate engine, is not expected to tackle its version of the spending bill until September. Deciding whether to continue the F136 is expected to be one of the thornier issues during House-Senate conference. The Obama Administration doesn’t want the F136, saying the General Electric/Rolls-Royce propulsion system isn’t necessary since the Pentagon is already maturing the F135. In fact, the White House said it would recommend that the President veto the defense authorization bill if it contained F136 funding. But this engine still enjoys considerable support among House members with key defense oversight roles such as Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who insist that the thought of going forward with just one engine provider is too risky given that the F-35 will constitute the vast majority of fighters in the US inventory in coming decades. “The GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team simply seeks the opportunity to compete,” said David Joyce, president and CEO of GE Aviation, in the company’s release yesterday. The F136 is “already more than 70 percent through its development” and the first F136 production engines are scheduled for delivery in 2012.

7/31/2009

Verbatim

Preemptive Action
"Since the [Defense] Department's acceptance of the independent estimates last fall, we've been, in just about every respect, acting as if the program were in a Nunn-McCurdy breach. ... We've been taking all of the mitigating and corrective action that we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach."
—Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, discussing with reporters the restructure of the F-35 strike fighter program announced in February 2010 and the probability that the program will soon exceed Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds that would necessitate, per US law, a program review and corrective steps, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2010.

Verbatim

Message for Grandma
"She has working for her as a citizen in the United States an Air Force Reserve that has some very talented, capable, patriotic, and willing individuals doing the business to keep this nation free. Just like her generation—the 'Greatest Generation'—was, I am very proud of the folks that we have got. If not the second greatest, then they are an extension of the greatest generation and they are ready, willing, and able to do the things that she would want them to do to make sure we keep our freedoms."
—Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, responding to a reporter's question on what the reporter should tell his 85-year-old grandmother to convey to her the importance of Air Force Reservists to the nation's security, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19, 2010.