Why is GE’s F110-129 the Best Engine for USAF’s F-15EX?

Sept. 14, 2021

Retired Air Force Gen. Paul V. Hester was already familiar with the power and performance of the GE F110-129 engine from his time commanding an F-16 Viper Wing in Misawa, Japan. But when he arrived at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., to take command of the 53rd Test and Evaluation Wing, it didn’t take long before the longtime F-15 Eagle pilot’s impression was greatly enhanced.

“When I got to Eglin, I inherited a program integrating the (F110)-129 engines on the F-15,” Hester said. The upgrade added 4,500 pounds of rated thrust to each engine and unrestricted throttle movement. When Hester sat in the back seat of an F-15 with the old engines and flew alongside another F-15 equipped with the F110-129 engines, the difference was apparent.

The two planes were separated by just three or four aircraft lengths at 10,000 feet at an airspeed of roughly 350 knots. “Then came the order to approach military power”—maximum speed without afterburners.

“The GE-powered airplane steadily moved out front and accelerated away from the one I was flying in,” said Hester, who went on to command Pacific Air Forces. “The difference in military power was impressive. It just put a smile on my face.”

Then the two Eagles came around and lined up again. This time, the order called for full afterburner. “And here’s where you got to notice the real difference between the two airplanes, one powered at 25,000-pound thrust and the other at 29,500-pound thrust,” Hester said. It was a significant jump in capability, and seeing that, well, I wanted to be checked out on the F-15 again!”

Now the Air Force is rolling out the newest version of the F-15, the new F-15EX Eagle II. And Hester, now retired and consulting with General Electric, says the benefits of the GE F110-129 have never been plainer.

“It’s no surprise that from Saudi Arabia to Qatar to the United States, every single one of the new advanced F-15s is powered by the GE motor,” Hester said. “When the Air Force decided they wanted to buy the EX version, they awarded the contract to GE as a sole source. But now it’s been opened for competition ,and we’re going to find out the winner, probably in the fall. The (F110)-129 is in a great position to win again.”

The first two F-15EX aircraft came equipped with F110-129 motors, and Hester argues all future EXs also should be powered by the GE engines.

“The F110-129 is the only engine in full production, fully tested, fully integrated and now delivered to the U.S. Air Force,” Hester said. “GE has worked with Boeing for years getting the engine integrated and qualified on those advanced F-15s. So now, everything the Air Force wants in the airplane has been accomplished and set in motion.”

In its first major exercise, two F-15EXs flew during Northern Edge 21 in Alaska in May. Six pilots flew 33 sorties covering nearly 90 total flight hours.

“We were able to get higher and faster than the F-15Cs due to the GE-129 motors,” Lt. Col. Weston Turner, director of the F-15 Division at the Air National Guard/Air Force Reserve Test Center, said in a press release shortly after Northern Edge concluded. “The expanded capabilities … and enhanced avionics brought significantly increased situational awareness and capabilities to the exercise.”

Such rave performance during Northern Edge speaks to the close integration of the new systems, engines, and avionics, Hester said. It’s where the years of work integrating the engine with the advanced F-15 airframe paid off—the F-15EX participated in a major exercise just months after being delivered to the Air Force for the first time.

He added that GE has a “continuous improvement mindset” regarding the F110. Over the life of the engine, several upgrades have modernized components and reduced maintenance. Each improvement has added to readiness and reduced time in the maintenance depot. It has resulted in an engine that on average goes more than 750 flight hours on wing between shop visits and demonstrates 6,000 total accumulated cycle intervals.

Having begun his career flying twin-engine F-15s, Hester started dreaming of getting more power during his tour at Misawa flying single-engine Vipers. “I used to muse at night that if we could just put two of these (F110)-129 motors on an F-15, what an incredible jump it would be to go faster and hold Gs in the turn—all those things fighter pilots love.”

The results were even more impressive than he imagined. And with the F-15EX, the F110-129 continues to excel, Hester said: “It is the best engine I ever flew.”

Guarding Its Secrets, DOD Updates Rules for UAS Purchases

Sept. 13, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

The Defense Department on Sept. 10 announced new guidance to control which commercial unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) DOD organizations can acquire, with the intent of making it easier to buy approved commercial UASs of all sizes while ensuring such systems do not become a vector for data breaches to foreign adversaries such as China.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks signed the updated guidance Sept. 8, aligning policy with direction in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to impose new restrictions out of concern about Chinese-made UAS products.

The updated policy allows DOD to “take advantage of rapid technological advancements of the commercial market while concurrently reaffirming the department’s recognition that certain foreign-made commercial UAS pose a clear and present threat to U.S. national security,” DOD said in a release.

At the same time, the rules will enable the department to more freely acquire commercially developed UASs by better defining a process for clearing trusted systems to ensure the systems are in full compliance with DOD rules.

DOD indicated in July that UAS products from China’s Da Jiang Innovations posed a national security threat. “Mitigating the threats posed by small UAS, including Da Jiang Innovations (DJI) systems, remains a priority across the department,” the July 23 statement said.

Pentagon spokesperson Jessica Maxwell told Air Force Magazine on Sept. 13 that Hicks’s guidance requires the Pentagon’s chief information officer and the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment to sign off on foreign-made UAS purchases. “We are taking actions to safeguard sensitive information,” she explained. “This guidance allows the department to procure commercially-made UAS more clearly.”

In 2019, the Department of Homeland Security warned about the potential that DJI was sending data to its Chinese manufacturers. A year later, the Interior Department grounded its DJI drones. Now DOD is following suit to stop the potential theft of sensitive data. Maxwell could not confirm how or whether a data breach had occurred, but the new guidance will strictly regulate the buying of foreign-made systems.

Among President Trump’s final executive orders was one encouraging the purchase of American-made UASs and underscoring the threat posed by software and electronic components from China.

Maxwell said Hicks’s guidance builds on that Executive Order and takes advantage of innovation in the private sector.

China’s Expedited ICBM Program Has Been a Top US Secret, Shows Need for Speed, Hyten Says

Sept. 13, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

“Unprecedented nuclear modernization” by China that is “now going public” has been underway for years but was a tightly held secret, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John E. Hyten said in an interview with the Brookings Institution streamed Sept. 13. The pace of the program is his top concern, he said.

Hyten said he saw China’s missile buildup underway when he was head of U.S. Strategic Command, from 2016 to 2019, but “it was in very classified channels and you couldn’t talk about it.” Now, “commercial imagery” in the press has uncloaked the scale of China’s program. Hyten did not say why knowledge of China’s buildup was so closely guarded, but such secrecy usually has to do with the sources and methods of intelligence.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said in August the implications of China’s missile program could be “catastrophic” if the Air Force doesn’t change itself fast enough to keep pace with the threat. The revelations of the missile building campaign “helps to validate what we’ve been talking about, why we need” the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent missile, the B-21 bomber, and Long-Range Stand Off missile, Brown said.

China is building “hundreds and hundreds of fixed silos” to hold intercontinental ballistic missiles, Hyten told Brookings host Michael O’Hanlon, “and it seems like, every couple of weeks, more pictures are coming in of more silos, and by the way, there’s no limits on what China can put in those silos.”

The U.S. and Russia are limited to 1,550 nuclear weapons under the New START treaty, Hyten said, but for China, “there’s no limit. They could put 10 re-entry vehicles on every one of those ICBMs if they wanted to—there’s nothing to limit that ability,” Hyten said.

Hyten compared “how fast they’re building these silos” with “the GBSD program, saying, even “if everything goes right, we’ll have 400 new silos with an initial operational capability in 2030, full operational capability [in] 2035. It’s going to take us 10, 15 years to modernize 400 silos that already exist. China’s building that many, basically, overnight.” The “speed of that difference … is what really concerns me the most.” Given China’s declaration of a “no first use” nuclear weapons policy, “You have to ask yourself, why are they building that enormous, enormous nuclear capability, faster than anybody in the world?”

The 2018 National Defense Strategy “started moving us toward the challenge we’re going to face with China,” ending an uncertain period in which the U.S. effectively had no defense strategy. But “the downside is, we’re still moving unbelievably slow, unbelievably slow. We’re so bureaucratic and risk-averse,” Hyten lamented. Without a stated strategy of competing with peer nations, “you can have a risk-averse strategy and you can go slow. But when you have a competitor like China—and Russia—that can move fast, you have to be able to move fast, as well. And we still move way too slow.”

While Hyten said China is America’s pacing military threat, Russia “cannot be discounted.” He noted that Russia announced its nuclear modernization plan in 2006 and it has followed through on it, and the upgraded nuclear weapons “are not … for Chechen rebels.” But China is a “very different competitor, because of the sheer size of their economy.”

He’s also concerned that the U.S. and China are “not talking to each other a lot,” even though they presumably have a common goal of avoiding all-out war.

The assumptions underlying the Joint Warfighting Concept are largely classified, Hyten said, and he declined to answer questions about America’s vulnerabilities and whether it’s stronger on defense or offense.

However, “We need to aggregate capabilities in order to integrate our fires. And we need to disaggregate our capabilities in order to survive and operate,” he said, adding, “We need to do that very quickly, in all domains, with all services at the same time.” Doing so will create a “huge problem” for America’s adversaries.

The services have been talking about “aggregating fires” through joint all-domain command and control, while “disaggregating capabilities” was a reference to dispersing U.S. military assets to compound the problem of targeting “large formations at fixed sites,” similar to the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment operating concept. Massing forces at fixed locations “is not good,” he observed.

He also said JADC2 is not simply about “protecting yourself,” but very much an offensive tool about “denying the adversary the same thing. So you have to put all those pieces together … At the unclassified level, I’ll stop there.”

Among his top frustrations, Hyten said he issued a clarion call to create a resilient space architecture more than six years ago, when he was at Air Force Space Command. He complained that America’s satellites are “a bunch of fat, juicy targets” because so much depends on them for communications, navigation, and sensing.

“Space Force has developed the concepts of what this new architecture is going to be, but we have not moved on that path,” Hyten said. The “same challenges” that were in the budget 10 years ago “are the same challenges … in the budget today,” he said.

However, “the good news is,” because of strong investment in military space, “we just have exquisite, enormous advantages over an adversary for the foreseeable future.” Whether that’s “five years or 10 years, I can’t tell you, but as fast as China is going, probably on the lesser side,” Hyten said.

When he was at STRATCOM, he did an analysis of the U.S. constellation’s vulnerability to kinetic attack, “And I became very, very confident that we could survive any threat that existed.” But now, given the pace of China’s modernization, it could “deny that,” he said.

The U.S. defense top line needs to grow at 3 percent to 5 percent real growth per year “if we keep doing business the way we have,” he said. However, if the U.S. military is allowed to divest systems that are no longer relevant—Hyten dislikes the term “legacy”—then a $700 billion budget “should be enough” for “a pretty darn good defense.”

Doing business differently can be as simple as not spending months on continuing resolutions, when contractors are on the meter and work is not getting done because the flow of money and new starts has been interrupted, Hyten said.

DOD is Accepting Inquiries for Civilian Advisory Board Roles

Sept. 13, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

Subject-matter experts can begin to inquire with the appropriate Biden administration officials about serving on the Defense Department’s volunteer federal advisory boards.

Some past members whose terms were ended early in February may be invited to rejoin.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ended the terms of “several hundred” members early—all those within his purview—emptying many of the boards in a purge unlike any other. Pentagon officials cited Austin’s desire for a “zero-based review” of all the boards so he could “get his arms around” their utility and even whether the 42 boards—some with subcommittees to boot—might all be reduced to “a single cross-functional advisory committee.”

Instead, his office announced Sept. 2 that 16 of the 42 boards have passed the review so far and that staff have restarted operations. DOD spokesperson Air Force Lt. Col. Uriah L. Orland confirmed to Air Force Magazine on Sept. 13 that people who are interested in board service can contact the board’s sponsor. Membership factors may vary according to legal requirements or a sponsor’s guidance.

“For the 16 boards that were announced on Sept. 2, the time will vary by board on how long it takes to repopulate membership,” Orland said. The DOD sponsors “will select and recommend individuals for appointment consideration.” These may include “previously appointed individuals, new individuals, or any combination as appropriate based on the mission/scope of the board and its membership requirements.”

Austin’s office has said he and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks will approve all members.

Pentagon staff began the reviews when many of the board’s official DOD sponsors, Biden administration political appointees, had not yet been named to their jobs. The reviews are either complete, as in the case of the 16, or in the final stages.

“We will have additional announcements as the zero-based reviews for each are completed,” Orland said. At a defense conference Sept. 8, Hicks reportedly said she hoped all 42 boards would be active again by the end of 2021.

At the time of the members’ terms being ended, the Pentagon did not plan to consult any members during the review process:

“Former board members are private citizens and are no longer affiliated with DOD,” said DOD spokesperson Susan Gough in an emailed reply to Air Force Magazine. “Sponsors should not be talking with former board members in an official capacity as they are now private citizens. A private citizen seldom comments on internal DOD reviews or deliberations unless the DOD invites or appoints the individual to serve in an advisory role.”

In the press briefing announcing the zero-based review Feb. 2, anonymous Pentagon officials said last-minute Trump administration appointees were another concern.

Members of DOD advisory boards volunteer to serve one-year terms with the possibility of having their terms renewed three times for a total of four years.

In a Pentagon press briefing Sept. 2, DOD Press Secretary John F. Kirby said the “boards and committees have been and will continue to be a valuable resource as we defend the nation, succeed through teamwork, and take care of our people,” according to the official transcript. “The Secretary looks forward to working with many of these bodies personally and expects other Department officials to do the same.”

The 16 boards Austin authorized to continue, and the DOD sponsor to contact for those interested in volunteering:

Defense Business Board—Hicks
Defense Policy Board—Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl
Defense Health Board—Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert R. Cisneros Jr
Department of Defense Board of Actuaries—Cisneros
Department of Defense Medicare-Eligible Retiree Health Care Board of Actuaries—Cisneros
Uniform Formulary Beneficiary Advisory Panel—Cisneros
Department of Defense Wage Committee—Cisneros
Defense Science Board—Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu
Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution, and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces—General Counsel of the Department of Defense Caroline D. Krass Inland
Waterways Users Board—Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth
Board on Coastal Engineering Research—Wormuth
Army Science Board—Wormuth
Marine Corps University Board of Visitor—Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro
Department of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board—Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall
U.S. Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group—Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley

North Korea’s Launch of Nuclear-capable Cruise Missile a ‘Threat’ to the Region, Says Pentagon

Sept. 13, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

The state news agency of North Korea confirmed the successful tests Sept. 11-12 of long-range cruise missiles it claims can carry a nuclear warhead, prompting the Pentagon to condemn the north’s military program.

“The activity itself certainly highlights the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s] continued focus on developing its military program and the threats that it continues to pose to its neighbors and the international community,” Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said at a Sept. 13 press briefing.

Kirby said his comments were based on press reports and were not a Defense Department confirmation that the tests took place.

The official North Korean news release called the long-range cruise missile a “strategic weapon,” necessary for deterrence, and said it hit targets 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away. Although that’s far from a threat to the U.S. homeland, it is easily within reach of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region, especially those in South Korea and Japan.

It is unclear whether United Nations sanctions on North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs would prohibit the types of tests that took place over the weekend.

Kirby said cruise missiles typically travel shorter distances with a smaller payload than longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles that U.S. missile defense systems are prepared to intercept from North Korea.

“A ballistic missile can often travel much longer distances at greater speeds than a cruise missile,” he said.

However, cruise missiles can be a powerful threat to regional interests.

“They can be much more precise in their targeting because they’re multi-directional,” Kirby said. “A cruise missile basically flies like an airplane, an un-piloted airplane, and so it can zig, it can zag, it can can do all kinds of different maneuvers before it hits its target.”

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command released a statement following the alleged DPRK test Sept. 12 saying it would consult with allies and partners and continue to monitor the situation.

“The U.S. commitment to the defense of the Republic of Korea and Japan remains ironclad,” the statement read.

New Rules to Attend AFA Conference: Proof of Vaccination or Negative COVID Test Now Required

Sept. 13, 2021 | By Scott King

Attendees to the Air Force Association’s 2021 Air, Space & Cyber Conference must present proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test taken within the prior three days to attend the conference in person Sept. 20-22.

After two consecutive virtual conferences, AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference returns next week live and in-person at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md. In addition to the vaccination or test mandate, masks must be worn indoors during the conference, except while eating or drinking, according to Prince George’s County, Md., rules.

Department of Air Force personnel, both military and civilian, are only authorized to attend in person if they are fully vaccinated. Other attendees may get around the vaccination requirement by testing negative for COVID-19 within three days of attendance and showing the results of that test on arrival.

Regardless, to obtain a badge, all attendees must either:

Show proof of vaccination, such as a vaccine card or digital vaccine passport, indicating the attendee is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, or
For non-DAF attendees only, show proof of a negative test result from a COVID-19 test obtained within three days of arrival at the conference venue

“Leading in the midst of a pandemic is a challenge to say the least,” wrote AFA Chairman of the Board Gerald Murray, former Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force; and AFA President retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright in a letter to members. “We are fortunate that our Air and Space Forces are in such capable hands. While we all would like to put away the masks and stop talking about pandemic statistics, the reality is the disease continues to spread and the risks remain high. Taking prudent measures such as these are necessary precautions to enable face-to-face engagement, the hallmark of a successful conference.”

Conference attendees should bring documentation with them, such as a printed or digital vaccine passport. No conference badges will be printed without such proof. “We recognize that this may slow down our process and that it may mean longer waiting times,” said AFA President Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright. “But we also know that inconvenience is a small price to pay to get back to in-person events.”

He urged attendees to go to the conference center on Saturday or Sunday to get badges before the crush of opening day. “If you go early, you can beat the crowds and get a jump on the whole event,” Wright said. “The earlier you come, the faster the process will be.”

AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference is the leading professional development event for Air Force and Space Force officers, enlisted members, civilians, veterans, and defense industry leaders and representatives. The ASC conference brings together top Air Force and Space Force leadership, industry experts, and government officials to discuss challenges facing the aerospace and cyber communities today and in the future.

The theme for this year’s event is “Air and Space Leadership for our Nation—Today and Tomorrow.”

Keynote speakers include Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, and Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines Holdings Inc., among others.

A livestream option will be available, but only for those who register to attend virtually. It is not too late to register for either the in-person or virtual option.

Outstanding Airmen of the Year: Tech. Sgt. Justin Bennett

Sept. 13, 2021

The Air Force’s 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2021 will be formally recognized at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference from Sept. 20 to 22 in National Harbor, Md. Air Force Magazine is highlighting one each workday from now until the conference begins. Today, we honor Tech. Sgt. Justin Bennett an anti-terrorism program manager at RAF Lakenheath, U.K.

Bennett superbly managed the United Kingdom’s largest anti-terrorism program by directly contributing to 42 force protection projects valued at over $22 million, while being the wing’s focal point for anti-terrorism measures for the Chief of Staff’s initiative of accelerating change through agile combat employment.

His actions fused the wing’s first agile combat employment mission with United States allies, enabling 4,700 sorties for U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa’s largest fighter wing.

Bennett’s commitment to excellence, personally and professionally, led to his selection by his peers to be the wing’s 5/6 vice president. A 5/6 council is a group that supports and mentors junior enlisted Airmen. In this role, Bennett mentored 2,000 peers and piloted six professional development courses while completing 18 credit hours to finalize his master’s degree in intelligence studies.

He also guided three Air Force site activation task forces by coordinating 54 anti-terrorism security designs to construct a $3 billion F-35 campus for the arrival of EUCOM’s first fifth-generation aircraft, which culminated in his selection as the Air Force’s security forces support staff noncommissioned officer of the year.

“In only a couple of years he’s been a staff sergeant, achieved technical sergeant on his first try, and now he’s a master sergeant select,” said Alex Higdon, 48th Security Forces Squadron anti-terrorism officer chief, in a USAF release. “He’s the embodiment of success professionally, and he also grows Airmen personally and professionally, by helping them out in terms of their personal life. He’s the go-to guy if you want to get an answer, and get it quickly.”

2021 Outstanding Airmen of the Year honoree Tech. Sergeant Justin Bennett. USAF

Read more about the other Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2021:

Outstanding Airmen of the Year: Tech. Sgt. Christopher Bennett

Sept. 10, 2021

The Air Force’s 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2021 will be formally recognized at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference from Sept. 20 to 22 in National Harbor, Md. Air Force Magazine is highlighting one each workday from now until the conference begins. Today, we honor Tech. Sgt. Christopher Bennett from the 81st Training Group at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.

Bennett excelled as a deployed combat airspace manager for a special operations detachment in direct support of Operation Inherent Resolve. He fused conventional and special operations tenets while integrating airpower assets into 10 international strike packages.

Bennett sterilized tactical airspace for 29 special operations raids while developing anti-drone weapon employment safety procedures. Additionally, he secured 3,100 commercial flights through hostile airspace from Turkish and Russian air strikes.

Bennett’s efforts enabled and enhanced kinetic, non-kinetic, and intelligence collection operations throughout Iraq and Syria, which led to the capture of 14 high-value targets and eliminated 94 enemy combatants.

He was awarded the Army’s combat action badge for his role in the coalition preparation and response to the Iranian missile attack on United States bases in Iraq, culminating in a Bronze Star Medal nomination. He received presidential list honors while working on his advanced degree, completed a second Community College of the Air Force degree in Instructor of Technology and Military Science, and garnered the John L. Levitow award upon graduation from the noncommissioned officer academy.

2021 Outstanding Airmen of the Year honoree Tech. Sergeant Christopher Bennett excelled as a deployed combat airspace manager for a special operations detachment in direct support of Operation Inherent Resolve. Air Force photo.

Read more about the other Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2021:

GE Says New Engine for F-35 Possible by 2027, but Not on STOVL Version

Sept. 10, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Engine makers should be able to meet House defense policy bill language calling for a new F-35 powerplant based on the Adaptive Engine Transition Program by 2027, but only for the conventional takeoff versions, a GE Aviation executive said.

“We would be eager to step up to the challenge to meet the 2027 deadline” that the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act included, David Tweedie, general manager for advanced combat systems at GE Aviation, said in a Sept. 10 interview, adding that doing so is “certainly within the art of the possible.”

He said, “We were encouraged by both the direction [to the Joint Program Office] to provide a transition plan, as well as authorization for an additional $257 million of funding above the President’s Budget request, so we are encouraged on all those counts.”

After $4 billion in investment by the Air Force, through several successive technology programs, GE is in the final stages of testing its XA100 engine and Pratt & Whitney is also testing its XA101. The AETP program is a risk-reduction effort designed to make sure the technology is available if the Air Force wants to move on to a new powerplant for its fighters. Tweedie said the plan was always to develop an engine that could be applied to the F-35 at midlife, and to other, future aircraft, but not as a retrofit to the F-15, F-16, or F-22. The AETP engines were “optimized to the F-35 … from the beginning,” he said.

However, the AETP engine will not be able to power the F-35B, the short takeoff/vertical landing version of the Lightning II, Tweedie said.

While “we think we have a very competitive offering for the F-35A and the F-35C, … we did not design the AETP engine to integrate with the F-35B. It was beyond the scope of what we set out to do,” he said. While Tweedie did not comment on how hard it would be to adapt AETP engines to this application, he did say it would be “beyond the budget and timeframe” set by the House to accomplish.

Pratt & Whitney, which makes the F135 engine that powers the Joint Strike Fighter, argues that putting a new engine in the jet would cost $40 billion more over the remaining expected 50-year life of the program, chiefly in sustainment costs, because of the need to develop and maintain at least two engine logistics enterprises while continuing with the F135 for the F-35B. Pratt & Whitney says it can make modifications to its F135 that would be sufficient to meet all the Joint Strike Fighter’s future power and thrust needs, with margin; and that its AETP could not be adapted to the F-35, as it “will not fit” that aircraft’s engine space.

The AETP engines were developed because the Air Force recognized that engine technology of the 1990s had gone about as far as possible, and engineers were struggling hard to squeeze even a percentage point or two more performance out of it. The AETP engines add a third airstream to the traditional turbofan cycle, giving it better thrust and providing more air for cooling, while making it more fuel efficient in cruise.

The F-35 JPO does not have an engine roadmap for integration of a new powerplant in the jet, but creating one is likely to be on the agenda of the next top-level meeting of F-35 partners and users. The JPO has not committed to using AETP technology in the fighter.

“The … AETP is in the very early stages of development and is not currently an F-35 requirement,” an F-35 JPO spokeswoman said. The Joint Program Office is “working with the AETP program office and our industry partners to evaluate this new engine technology for possible use in the F-35.”

GE announced on Sept. 7 that it has begun testing the second all-up example of its XA100 AETP engine at its Evendale, Ohio, plant, which Tweedie said would likely be a “two-month effort, plus or minus.” The company says its version of the engine surpasses the F135 by 10 percent in thrust and 25 percent in fuel efficiency, along with a “significant reduction in carbon emissions.”

GE claims its XA100 engine has more thrust and fuel efficiency than the F-35’s current engine, the F135 from Pratt & Whitney. GE courtesy photo.

After GE has wrung out the XA100 at Evendale, it will be transferred to the Air Force for testing at Arnold Engineering Development Center, Tenn., where there is more sophisticated equipment that is only available to the Air Force.

It’s unclear how exactly the program will advance beyond this final stage; Tweedie said the contractors are “looking forward to what’s in the fiscal ‘23” budget request, as the 2022 version did not include out-years spending plans. “We have not seen a … finalized Air Force acquisition strategy,” he said.

But in a Sept. 7 Defense News conference, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said it’s important to press on with it, even if it isn’t used in the F-35.

“You’ve got to continue the R&D [research and development] … so that you have options in the future,” Brown said. “If we stop the R&D on this, we basically shut ourselves off from having an option to go forward.”

GE would “need to see something in the ’23 budget to keep this momentum going,” Tweedie said of Brown’s comments, paraphrasing Brown as saying, “’You can’t stop.’ And that’s true of any major development effort. There’s a lot of cycle time lost if you bring that effort to a complete halt.”

The Air Force has had superior fighter engine technology for generations, Tweedie said, and “10 years ago, the Air Force came to industry and said, ‘We need to earn that again; we need the next generational leap in technology.” The AETP program, and other such projects before it, were focused on being “ready to go launch that next full-scale engineering and manufacturing development program … We’ve met the Air Force’s objective to burn that risk down.”

Lockheed Martin, builder of the F-35 fighter, has worked with both GE and Pratt & Whitney throughout the AETP program to ensure that what they were developing would fit in the F-35; that “access panels, and all the other things” needed for service and maintenance would line up, Tweedie said. Lockheed Martin “has been an active participant in this program from Day 1,” and the resulting powerplants should, with development, “fit seamlessly” into the jet.