Pratt & Whitney Rebuts F-35 Engine Critics

Pratt & Whitney on Monday fired back at criticism from two government watchdogs about its flagship military jet engine, insisting reliability issues were under control.

The company's, a unit of United Technologies Corp., has endured flak from the Pentagon over the cost and performance of the engine used to power the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and a new report said quality issues may arise and hit the performance and schedule of the program.

Pratt won the engine deal after a hard-fought contest with General Electric Co., and plans to build 50 F-135 engines for the advanced fighter this year, with annual production rising above 200 by 2020 if Pentagon funding and international orders emerge.

Oversight of suppliers that provide 80% of the engine's parts is being increased in an effort to boost reliability and quality control, Bennett Croswell, president of Pratt & Whitney Military Engines told reporters on an hour-long media call. An internal Pentagon watchdog found multiple instances of problems with Pratt's quality-control system, though not with the engines themselves.

More serious were the issues raised by a recent Government Accountability Office review that Mr. Croswell said caught the company by surprise with its unusually stern language over poor reliability.

"I don't think it gave a full picture," said Mr. Croswell. "The engine is reliable."

Pratt is retrofitting engines on planes already in use with new parts to improve reliability and fix problems identified when one caught fire on take off last summer, grounding the F-35 fleet for weeks and leading to flying restrictions, some of which remain in place.

Though the fixes will take two years to roll out across the F-35 fleet, Mr. Croswell said Pratt's testing indicated the engines would perform above expectations.

The company is producing the engines at facilities in Middletown, Conn., and West Palm Beach, Fla., and has been pursuing a "War on Costs" in the F-135 program that it said has cut expenses by 55% since 2009.

The F-135 is the centerpiece of growth for Pratt's $3.5 billion military jet engine as older models retire, and it is due to negotiate the sale of two more batches with the Pentagon this year.

Pentagon officials have over the past year been more critical of Pratt's performance on the F-35 than of Lockheed Martin Corp., which is assembling the jet. Both companies have had payments withheld by the Defense Department because of performance shortfalls on the F-35, which is due to have limited battle readiness with the U.S. Marine Corp. later this year.

The Pentagon has said it can bring only limited sanctions to bear on Pratt, the sole supplier for the single-engine F-35. The U.S. stopped funding a rival engine project led by GE in 2011.

Write to Doug Cameron at [e-mail]

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