A House-Senate fiscal 2024 appropriations conference agreement says that it would add $277 million for three U.S. Air Force F-35A fighters by Lockheed Martin [LMT]. The agreement would thus raise the service’s Lightning II buy from 48 planes this fiscal year to 51 for a total cost of $5.2 billion.
In addition to the $277 million for three more F-35As, congressional appropriators said that they added almost $104 million to Air Force F-35A procurement for “unit cost shortfalls” and $83 million from F-35A advance procurement.
The agreement also “does not support the integration of an alternative engine on the F-35, and includes a new general provision that prohibits the use of funds to integrate an alternative engine on any F-35 aircraft,” the bill’s explanatory statement says.
The Air Force announced last March that it had decided to move forward on RTX‘s [RTX] Pratt & Whitney F135 Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) for the F-35 and end the service’s Advanced Engine Transition Program (AETP) (Defense Daily, March 13, 2023).
As part of AETP, General Electric [GE] had proposed its XA100 Tri-Variant Adaptive (TVA) engine to accommodate the envisioned Block 4 weapons and other upgrades for the Lockheed Martin F-35.
While the Air Force requested no Lockheed Martin C-130J airlifters in fiscal 2024, the appropriations conferees added more than $1 billion, including $840 million for eight C-130Js for Air National Guard units.
“There is concern that if air wings are directed to operate a mixed fleet of C-130Hs and C-I30Js, that could increase local maintenance burdens and decrease the overall readiness of the force,” the conferees said. “Therefore, the secretary of the Air Force is directed to, through the existing Strategic Basing Process, prioritize upgrading existing C-130H squadrons with C-130J aircraft at a one-to-one ratio.”
The Air Force also did not request any Lockheed Martin HH-60W Jolly Green II combat rescue helicopters in fiscal 2024, but the conference agreement would add $400 million for 10 HH-60Ws.
The service had planned to begin buying the Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A Sentinel next generation ICBM in fiscal 2024, but program delays and a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach have affected the program (Defense Daily, Jan. 24).
The conference agreement would transfer $539 million the Air Force had budgeted for Sentinel procurement in fiscal 2024 to the research and development account for Sentinel. In addition, the conferees, upon Air Force recommendation, moved about $7 million from the Sentinel R&D account to Sentinel advance procurement for RTX’s Collins Aerospace Secondary Launch Platform-Airborne (SLP-A), which is to replace the Minuteman III’s Airborne Launch Control System.