When he was putting together his first presidential budget
proposal this spring, Barack Obama decided to make an aircraft engine that
costs as much as $1 million per foot a symbol of the sort of Pentagon waste he
says he’s determined to root out.
The new president declared his intention to abandon the
Defense Department’s long-running plans for developing a second, alternative
jet engine for the military’s next-generation F-35 fighter and to use the
savings to make more and less-expensive copies of the plane. “We’re going to
save money by eliminating unnecessary defense programs that do nothing to keep
us safe,” Obama said. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates also weighed in,
warning that he would recommend that Obama veto any congressional attempt to
keep the second engine program alive.
But these days, it looks increasingly likely Obama won’t get
his way on one of his first high-profile efforts to shape Pentagon procurement
— in no small measure because advocates of the two-engines-are-better-than-one
approach have some solid evidence on their side.
Last week Congress cleared a defense authorization bill that
would keep the alternative F-35 engine program alive, and a veto is highly
unlikely because the same measure also would extend protection to gay people
under the federal hate crimes law, a longstanding objective of the Democratic
Party. And if $560 million for the backup engine is provided under separate
appropriations legislation, which seems possible, Obama will be hard-pressed to
sign that measure because of his other priorities that it’s likely to finance.
Proponents of two engines argue that such competition and
redundancy will prove cost-effective in the long run. And the lawmakers and
military experts in this camp can point to a series of Government
Accountability Office and Pentagon studies concluding that similar
second-engine programs for the F-15 and F-16 warplanes improved performance and
production costs for those fighters, which have been Air Force workhorses since
the 1970s.
“They would rather eat their corn than plant it,” is the way
a senior congressional aide, who favors a competition for an alternative engine
but wished to remain anonymous, described the administration’s approach to the
F-35, also called the Joint Strike Fighter.
The president and others on his side say one engine is
adequate and, besides that, all that’s affordable now. But on this score they
have been put in the unenviable position of arguing against the very
manufacturer of the principal engine, United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt &
Whitney. In a report quietly submitted to the congressional Armed Services
committees this summer, the company conceded that technical challenges have
pushed the cost of the machinery up almost 50 percent, to about $18 million an
engine.
The debate is no small matter, for both fiscal policy and
military readiness. A modern jet warplane is essentially a collection of
weaponry, wings and a cockpit strapped to an engine. If the engine doesn’t
function properly, there is no warplane to fly.
Backbone of the Force
The essential arguments for a backup F-35 engine, which is
already in development by General Electric Co. and Britain’s Rolls-Royce, is
that the competition will improve quality and control costs now, and in the
future a backup could prove invaluable if the first engine develops a systemic
flaw that could otherwise ground the backbone of the fighter attack force; most
such planes are supposed to be F-35s within the next 10 years.
“You have to have an insurance policy if something goes
wrong with that motor,” said retired Lt. Gen. Michael A. Hough of the Marine
Corps, a former director of the Joint Strike Fighter program at the Pentagon.
The military plans to buy roughly 2,500 copies of the F-35
over the 30-year life of the program. Only the first 11 test aircraft have been
delivered so far. In slightly different forms, the plane is going to be the
successor to the collection of aging tactical fighters now flown by the Air
Force, Navy and Marines.
Although President George W. Bush also opposed the
two-engine approach, Congress has continued to provide unrequested funding for
the backup since fiscal 2007. The $560 million in the House version of the
Defense appropriations bill — which the Senate seems ready to accept during
conference negotiations — is about half what would be needed to complete
development by 2013, according to the Congressional Research Service. Estimates
for the total costs of the engine’s development range from $4 billion to
roughly $8 billion, according to three studies conducted on the alternative
engine.
Cost Reduction Promised
But independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, where the
Pratt & Whitney engine is built, says such spending is a waste of money.
“The risks associated with a single engine provider are manageable,” said
Lieberman, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee.
Advocates for the second engine say Lieberman’s view is
mistaken and parochial. Last month the Pratt & Whitney engine, they note,
suffered its sixth failure during a test, which revealed problems with the
engine’s fan blades for the third time. And in July the company told Congress
the third order for its engines was costing about $18 million apiece, a far cry
from the Air Force’s original $12.5 million projection. Costs for the two
previous orders were also high, and so the Pentagon has ordered a team of top
Air Force and Navy acquisition officials to identify the reasons and propose
solutions by Nov. 20.
Pratt & Whitney spokeswoman Erin Dick declined to
comment on the past cost overruns, but she said the company has promised a
“double-digit percentage reduction in cost” for the fourth order.
Maj. Gen. David R. Heinz of the Marines, the manager of the
program, has declined to discuss the Joint Strike Fighter since June, when he
told reporters more debate was needed on whether depending on one engine is too
risky.
Earlier this month, Gates sent a letter to John P. Murtha, the
Pennsylvania Democrat who chairs the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee,
reiterating Obama’s view that further funding for the alternative engine would
interfere with the overall F-35 program. “If the final bill presented to the
president would seriously disrupt” the Joint Strike Fighter program, “I would
recommend that he veto the bill,” Gates wrote.
Yet even with such threats hanging over their heads, Murtha
and other senior House members appear confident that both defense bills
supporting the alternative engine will become law by the end of the year.
For starters, Murtha notes, both the defense authorization
conference report and the House version of the Defense spending bill largely
meet Obama’s requests for the F-35. And the addition of funding for the
alternative engine, Murtha insists, would not “disrupt” the F-35 program — the
standard laid out by the Defense secretary for recommending a veto. Murtha
predicts alternative-engine funding will be included in the final Defense
spending conference report. And last week Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat
who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and its Defense panel,
signaled that he would not fight that outcome.
Another Hawaii Democrat who’s generally been the president’s
ally, Neil Abercrombie, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee,
argues that the president is not being well advised on the F-35. “Obama is
taking a huge chance that somehow this program will just right itself,”
Abercrombie said. “The defense bill was handled in a sober, serious and
straightforward way. It has overwhelming support of both bodies. This is an
important bill” that the president should sign and then “move on,” Abercrombie
added.
Lawmakers including Murtha and Abercrombie are pointing to
the recent Pratt & Whitney engine failures as justification of a
second-engine program. And they’re receiving help from Hough, the former Joint
Strike Fighter program manager, who says Pratt & Whitney’s problems with
the engine underscore the dangers to national security if the U.S. military were to become too
dependent on one engine.
If the engine experienced design, fan blade or other
systemic troubles, the entire F-35 fleet could be ordered out of the skies for
weeks. Although such groundings are rare, they have occurred.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the Marine
Corps grounded more than 100 AV-8B Harrier jets in 2000 because of engine
problems. And the Air Force has twice grounded warplane fleets due to engine
issues since 1990.
Jockeying for Influence
As lawmakers and military experts defend the alternative
engine, the two principal American companies involved in the debate — Pratt
& Whitney and General Electric — are waging their own battle for influence
on Capitol Hill.
Rick Kennedy, a spokesman for GE, which supplies the engines
for 70 percent of the nation’s tactical fighter jets, says his company and
Rolls-Royce have offered the Pentagon a fixed-price contract for the backup
engine, which essentially means GE would be responsible for anything spent
beyond the contract value. But according to a senior congressional aide who
favors the single-engine approach, Pratt & Whitney has also offered a fee
structure for the fourth lot of engines that “will protect the government against
possible cost overruns.”
A portion of the $19 million that GE has devoted to lobbying
lawmakers this year has gone to dispel what Kennedy calls “misinformation.”
Pratt & Whitney’s parent, United Technologies, has devoted some of its $4.4
million in lobbying expenses to the F-35 engine.
Meanwhile, the controversy over the alternative engine also
has foreign policy dimensions.
Britain,
along with seven other international partners that are slated to buy the F-35
for their own air forces, signed agreements with the United States in 2006 and 2007 that
require the inclusion of the alternative engine in the F-35 program.
A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington declined to comment on defense
bills that are about to be voted upon in Congress or the possibility of a
presidential veto. But the official, Neil O’Reilly, like others on the
second-engine side of the debate, had an official opinion from the other side
of the pond. “The United
Kingdom believes that a competitive engine
strategy will reduce costs and risk through the life of the” Joint Strike
Fighter program, O’Reilly said.
