LONDON—Pratt & Whitney now has 400 engineers working on a major upgrade for the F135 engine that powers the Lockheed Martin F-35, as the company waits for congressional approval of the formal program go-ahead in fiscal 2024, a company executive told Aerospace DAILY July 13. 

The team assigned to the Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) program has been funded with previous congressional add-ons to the fiscal 2023 budget that now total $180 million in awarded contracts, including a $66 million award announced on July 11, says Jill Albertelli, president of Pratt’s military engines business, who answered questions on the sidelines of the Global Air and Space Chiefs’ Conference (GASCC). 

The awards are funding work on early architecture studies and engineering preparation for the preliminary design review, Albertelli said. Both efforts have been launched as Congress considers the Pentagon’s request to launch full development of the ECU program in fiscal 2024.

Despite internal decisions that burst into the open during the Paris Air Show last month, Pratt officials are continuing to work constructively with counterparts at Lockheed, Albertelli said. She met with her Lockheed counterparts during GASCC.

The meetings at GASCC came two weeks after Lockheed released a statement of support for the ECU program. 

“We will continue our partnership with government and industry to implement the U.S. government’s decision to pursue the F135 Engine Core Upgrade and any future decisions to stay ahead of the evolving threat,” Lockheed said in a statement released on June 30. 

Lockheed’s support for the ECU program had become a matter of tension with the F-35’s engine manufacturer. During Paris Air Show, Greg Ulmer, Lockheed’s executive vice president for aeronautics, told reporters that he supports the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), which seeks to re-engine the F-35’s engine rather than only upgrade it. 

U.S. Air Force officials considered AETP as an alternative to the ECU program in 2022, but decided this year to move forward with the latter due to funding constraints. The decision moved the debate over the future of AETP to Congress, which must decide whether to keep the program going in parallel to ECU or approve funding for only the latter. 

GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney have developed competing adaptive turbofan engines for AETP.