JSF Alternate Engine Faces Crunch Time

Aviation Week and Space Technology ^ | 12/2/2010 | Guy Norris

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

General Electric and Rolls-Royce are fighting a rear-guard action to save the embattled F136 alternate Joint Strike Fighter engine from being canceled by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates as funding threatens to dry up. But even then the program faces challenges on Capitol Hill.

The engine program has sufficient funds in place to continue through mid-December, around the same time an emerging continuing resolution (CR) would expire under a congressional deal reached Dec. 1. The short-term extension to the current CR, which expires Dec. 3, would allow the U.S. government to operate at 2010 funding levels until Dec. 18, but the extension’s impact on the future of the F136 remains almost as unclear as it is now.

To protect the F136 from possible termination by Gates, an outspoken opponent of the alternate engine to the F-35’s Pratt & Whitney’s baseline F135 engine, Congress must pass appropriations specifically referring to the program, and make sure the White House cannot veto it. Otherwise, current executive-branch guidance from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) states that automatic apportionment does not apply “if either the House or Senate has reported or passed a bill that provides no funding for an account at the time the CR is enacted.”