Pratt & Whitney’s F-135 engine, pictured here on the final assembly line. Photo, courtesy of Pratt & Whitney.
RTX‘s Pratt & Whitney has received a $2.8 billion U.S. Navy contract for Lot 18 F135 engines for the three variants of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter.
The contract includes production and spare engines for DoD and foreign nations’ militaries, spare modules, program management, tooling, engineering and production support, Pratt & Whitney said.
“The F135 program sustains more than 67,000 domestic jobs, 240 U.S. suppliers and contributed more than $9.1 billion to the U.S. economy in 2024,” according to the company. “To date, Pratt & Whitney has delivered more than 1,300 F135 production engines to a global enterprise that includes 20 allied nations.”
Carrying over a provision since 2024, House and Senate appropriators’ versions of their fiscal 2026 defense bills bar DoD from funding an F-35 alternative engine to the F135.
The Senate appropriators’ bill adds $280 million for F135 spares and $500 million for F-35 sustainment to help address “sub-optimal projected operational readiness rates.”
On Sept. 30 last year, DoD said that Pratt & Whitney had received a received a more than $1.3 billion cost plus incentive fee contract for the F135 Engine Core Upgrade (ECU).
In fiscal 2024, the Air Force decided to scrap the Advanced Engine Transition Program and move ahead with ECU.
A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.