Pratt & Whitney Facing Challenging Cost Curve As F-35 Ramp Rate Slows

摘要

Joint Strike Fighter engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney and its major suppliers are coming to terms with how to keep lowering the cost of the F135 engine even as the Defense Department significantly slows its procurement of the JSF aircraft, according to two company executives. DOD announced last month that it has decided to purchase 179 fewer F-35s in the short term to give the fighter jet more time to mature in testing, and that reduction in airframes also means the department will purchase fewer engines than planned. Pratt & Whitney (P&W) delivered 27 F135 engines in 2011 and will deliver 50 in 2012, but that number will flatten over the next five years, contrary to DOD and the company's projections before the fiscal year 2013 budget release. In a Feb. 23 interview with Inside the Air Force, Bennett Croswell, president of P&W's military engines business, said the company managed to bring the price of each F135 down by $ 1.6 million in 2011. However, continuing to reduce the engine's price tag will be complicated by the new, slower ramp rate, as well as by the end of production on the F-22 Raptor's engine, known as the F119. "The way it's laid out now, it's pretty flat, so the challenge for us is, how do we keep coming down on that cost curve?" Croswell said. "Because the challenge Pratt & Whitney faces is the [F] 119 goes out of production this year. F100 and Fl 17 volumes are down. So if you look at our volume, if you compare 2011, when we delivered about 160 engines, we're going to go to 95 [in 2013,] so our military engines production volume is dropping 40 percent. So how do we keep on our cost curve? And that's fully our intent. We're going to try and stay on that curve, but it's a challenge."