Pratt & Whitney has drawn a new, $642-million contract from U.S. Navy for performance-based logistics activities for F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter – the Lockheed Martin-built combat aircraft for which P&W supplies the F-135 engine.
The F-135 is the afterburning turbofan power source that Pratt & Whitney developed for the single-engine fighter jets.
The F-35 – which is supplied in three variants for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and U.S. Dept. of Defense Foreign Military Sales customers -- represents the Pentagon’s largest purchasing program. Contracts for new aircraft are issued in sequence with federal budgets, then updated intermittently with modifications typically issued by the individual service branches to cover the contractors’ recurring expenses and to maintain aircraft already in service.
The new contract for Pratt & Whitney covers “maintenance of support equipment, common program activities, unique and common base recurring sustainment, repair of ‘repairables,’ field-service representatives, common replenishment spares, conventional take-off and landing/carrier variant F135 unique maintenance services and short take-off and landing F135 unique services”. These products and services will support F-135 propulsion systems installed for F-35 aircraft now in service with the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, non-Department of Defense participants and Foreign Military Sales customers.
According to DoD, contract work will be performed at Pratt & Whitney’s manufacturing center in East Hartford, Conn., as well as at Oklahoma City, Beaufort Marine Corps Air Station in South Carolina, Eglin AFB in Florida, Edwards AFB in California, Hill AFB in Utah, Luke AFB in Arizona, and in Camari, Italy.
The contract is expected to be completed in November 2021.
