Pratt & Whitney on Jan. 12 marked the end of production of the F117 engine, which powers the C-17 Globemaster III, with a ceremony preceding delivery of the final power plant to the Air Force this month. The engine is the last of 1,313 the company has produced for USAF and through foreign military sales since the C-17 entered service in 1993. “There is a great sense of fulfillment and, yes too, a sense of sadness,” said Bennett Croswell, president of Pratt’s military engines division, in a Jan. 12 ceremony at a company facility in Middletown, Conn. “Because it really is bittersweet to be handing over the final F117 engine today. … This is as successful and important a program as we’ve ever had here at military engines from both a production and a sustainment perspective,” Croswell said. Brig. Gen Stacey Hawkins, director of logistics, engineering, and force protection for Air Mobility Command, said the engine has been vital to the rapid global mobility mission handled by the C-17, which he called “a workhorse of global mobility.” Since the aircraft first flew for the service, it has totaled 2.3 billion flight hours, setting 33 airlift records. “This engine is vital to our national security by defeating and deterring our enemies and by saving the lives of those who have been persecuted or in need of help,” Hawkins said at the ceremony. (See also Pratt & Whitney release.)
Amid NATO’s continued push to ramp up air defenses in Eastern Europe, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall swung by seven allied countries to boost relations last week, including those on Russia’s and Ukraine’s doorstep.