PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Pratt & Whitney, the United Technologies Corp. [UTX] division that builds the F135 engine for the F-35 Lightning II, is looking for ways to continue cutting costs to keep the new fighter as affordable as possible.
The company, which has delivered 350 F135s so far and expects to produce thousands more for the single-engine aircraft, is working on 600 tasks to decrease hardware costs, on top of 1,200 it has already completed.
“We’ll keep chipping away at the core hardware,” said Matthew Bromberg, president of Pratt & Whitney Military Engines.
The company also is stepping up efforts to help top-tier suppliers trim their production costs.
“Now we’re going to start really focusing with them, bringing in expertise to look at should-costs of those components, identify if they have the most cost-effective production system, challenging them on their supplier management,” Bromberg told reporters May 31 at a media event near the company’s West Palm Beach engine facility.
Another area that will receive more attention is sustainment. Pratt & Whitney has already lowered sustainment costs by almost 15 percent by reducing hardware costs. It expects to add to those savings by making its engine more reliable.
“We’re hitting reliability targets, but anything we can do to improve reliability will increase the time between depot visits, which reduces the cost of the overall program,” Bromberg said at the media event, for which Pratt & Whitney paid for press travel.
To further contain sustainment costs, the company is trying to improve its ability to predict where spare engines will be needed and how to get them there as soon as possible. And it is developing ways to streamline repairs to reduce material consumption.
“That’s the new frontier,” Bromberg said. “We know how to take cost out of the aftermarket, and we’re going to do that on the sustainment of the F-35.”
The three-variant F-35, the U.S. Defense Department’s most expensive program, is expected to cost nearly $400 billion for acquisition and over $1 trillion for operations and support, making it a prime target for scrutiny. President Donald Trump has threatened to cut DoD’s F-35 purchase if prime contractor, Lockheed Martin [LMT], does not lower the cost of the stealthy fighter jet.