Ever since Citizens Against Government Waste released its 2009 Congressional Pig Book on April 14, 2009, funding for the Joint Strike Fighter alternate engine has come under immense scrutiny. CAGW even has a web page dedicated to the engine. CAGW has identified $771 million in pork barrel earmarks for the alternate engine.
Congress is in the final stages of deciding how much funding the alternate engine should receive in fiscal year 2010. Now comes word of massive failures that should make a congressional decision not to fund the alternate engine very easy. According to an October 7, 2009 article in DoD Buzz:
The engine war plot thickened Wednesday as GE/Rolls Royce, builders of the F136 alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, stopped testing the engine this week after a routine inspection revealed “dings and nicks” on the turbine blades.
Unfortunately, $560 million has been authorized for the engine and there is word that the final Defense spending bill will contain funding. But wait, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) wants answers. In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on November 4, Senator Lieberman wrote:
I write to share my concerns about the October 4 test stand incident involving the F136 alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. In the month since that incident, I have not received any information beyond an initial press release from the Joint Program Office (JPO) despite multiple requests through my staff. It is critical that the JPO explain the root cause of this incident, planned remedial actions, and likely schedule and cost impacts so that Congress can make final decisions on appropriations for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2010.
I understand that although the F136 Joint Engine Team led by General Electric has already spent 70 percent of the funds budgeted to complete the Systems Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase of the program, it completed only 52 hours of tests on the alternate engine. In this period, it has also been reported that the engine suffered four incidents that halted testing. I have seen additional reports that the F136 Joint Engine Team cancelled its planned tests at the Arnold Engineering Development Center through April 2010, a step that indicates this latest failure will require a significant re-design of the alternate engine.
The evidence is mounting that funding for the alternate engine must stop immediately. Every dollar wasted on an unwanted and poor performing engine is a dollar that is not being spent on real military needs.
Filed under: Appropriations, Defense, Earmarks
