Mar. 8—East Hartford-based Pratt & Whitney has been awarded a $5.2 billion contract for the continued production of F135 jet engines, company officials said this week.
The new contract will mark the 15th and 16th production lots of F135 engines. The contract also includes an option to award a 17th production lot of the engine that powers all three variants of the F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft, which is produce by Maryland-based defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consulting firm, said each production lot encompasses between 120 and 150 engines.
Production of the F135 engine by Pratt & Whitney is a major driver of economic growth around the country, according to company officials. It supports more than 53,000 jobs across 36 states.
Information on how many jobs the production program supports in Connecticut was not immediately available Wednesday.
Jen Latka, the company's vice president for the F135 program said the award "marks a major milestone for the program."
"This contract award enables us to continue delivering critical 5th Generation propulsion capability to the warfighter at a fair and reasonable cost for the taxpayer," Latka said. She said Pratt & Whitney's efficiency efforts have reduced the average unit cost of an F135 engine by more than 50 percent, which will produce an estimated $8.1 billion over the life of the program.
As of December 2022, Pratt & Whitney has delivered more than 1,000 F135 engines, according to company officials.
A December accident involving an F-35B at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in Texas resulted in a two-month pause in production of the engine and deliveries of the aircraft.
Pratt officials said last week they had found a way to fix the problem with the engine, which has experienced problems with harmonic resonance, which is a vibration issue. Resolving the engine vibration issue came just ahead of the this month's release of the fiscal 2024 federal budget, which could be released in a matter of days. Aboulafia said Pratt & Whitney will be scrutinizing the proposed budget closely to see if it contains any funding for a F135 engine replacement.
Developing a replacement would involve a large up-front investment, he said. And even if that were to happen, Aboulafia said a replacement engine probably wouldn't be in production until sometime late in the current decade.
"Every year that funding for a replacement engine doesn't show up in the federal budget is good news for Pratt," he said.
Pratt & Whitney is a subsidiary of giant defense contractor Raytheon Technologies.
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