Pratt & Whitney has entered into an agreement with the United States Department of Defense to produce at least 250 F135 turbojet twin-circuit engines for three variants of Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation fighters. This is reported by the Defense News publication.
Of the 250 power units, 178 will go to American aircraft, the remaining F135 will be received by foreign buyers of the F-35 Lightning II. The contract amount is about 4.4 billion dollars. It is planned to start deliveries of the 15th and 16th batches of engines in 2022, and to complete them in 2025.
If all the possibilities of the contract are realized, up to 518 engines for a total of about $ 8 billion can be sold.
In December 2021, The Drive reported that the F135 powertrains currently used on the F-35 Lightning II in 2027 could be replaced with General Electric XA100 or Pratt & Whitney XA101 engines, which should increase the range of the aircraft by 30 percent.
In July 2020, Matthew Bromberg, president of the Military Engines division of the American Pratt & Whitney, told Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine that the three-circuit XA101 adaptive cycle engine being developed by the company as part of the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) represents the future of power plants, including military ones.
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