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Former Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., was victorious Thursday in a hard-fought battle to keep alive a development program for a second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, Senate aides said.

During a closed Senate Armed Services Committee markup Thursday of the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill, Warner was successful in overturning a decision by the Armed Services Airland Subcommittee to accept the Pentagon's request to scrap the so-called alternate engine.

Airland Subcommittee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., has long supported the cancellation of the second engine, which the Pentagon says would save $1.8 billion over the next five years. Connecticut is home to United Technologies' Pratt & Whitney unit, the primary engine manufacturer for the international fighter program.

Warner forecast his efforts to reinstate funding for the alternate engine during a brief interview Wednesday. "It's not over 'til it's over," he said.

The former chairman was among those who led the effort last year to reverse the Pentagon's budget decision to cancel the second engine, which would be built by General Electric Co. and the British firm Rolls Royce. He has said repeatedly that competition to provide the engine for the $250 billion international fighter program would result in cost savings and a better final product.

Warner also has been sympathetic to the concerns of other nations who intend to buy the plane, including Britain, that their companies have not received adequate work on the program.

Warner's amendment does not authorize a specific amount of fiscal 2008 money for the alternate engine, but requires the Defense Department to obligate enough funding to continue its development. The House last week included $480 million in its version of the defense authorization for the second engine.

Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., co-sponsored the Warner amendment. Lieberman has pointed out that any funds for the second engine would ultimately come from other areas of the Joint Strike Fighter program.

COMMENTS

• The 2nd Engine for the JSF is old think. It continues the cold war mentality that we need to keep two of everything around. The F-18 program has been quite successful in a single source engine as well as the F-117, B-2, etc. This is never addressed because it is a GE engine that is on the F-18, B-2 and F-117. Second sourcing isn't necessary unless the company is Pratt & Whitney (this is the logic from the Dinosaurs trying to give a welfare check to GE and Rolls). Let's call pork what it is, pork. The Services have requested that the 2nd source engine be killed because they want the airplanes they sorely need instead of flushing the money down a corporate welfare hole. These kids are fighting a war and need our support to get the tools to do the job, not a political pig on stick that they can't use. Frank Alvidrez Posted May 31, 2007 2:22 PM
• I seem to recall that the Government promoted an adaptation of the General Electric engine that powered the B-1 bomber, to provide an alternative to the Pratt & Whitney F100 that was used in both the F-15 and F-16 fighters. It worked out rather well, with the Air Force splitting its annual buy between the two, according to both cost and technical performance. Frank Hurley PhD Posted May 25, 2007 2:46 PM
• We used to take a standard design and have it produced by many vendors. The M1 and its spare parts was made by General Motors, IBM, Rock Ola, and seven or eight others, with the result of increased production and lower cost and supportability. The logistics nightmare of having multiple engines for a war machine is unthinkable. How do you stock spares? In a modern atmosphere of coalition force support if every country supplies its own design for a "common" fighter, it is no longer common and becomes unsupportable. Jim Reaves Posted May 25, 2007 7:43 AM