{"id":10286,"date":"2011-07-01T10:39:05","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T14:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=10286"},"modified":"2011-07-01T10:44:03","modified_gmt":"2011-07-01T14:44:03","slug":"pentagon-the-supposedly-self-funded-duplicate-f-35-engine-will-eventually-leave-taxpayers-on-the-hook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/10286\/pentagon-the-supposedly-self-funded-duplicate-f-35-engine-will-eventually-leave-taxpayers-on-the-hook\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon: The Supposedly “Self-Funded” Duplicate F-35 Engine Will Eventually Leave Taxpayers on the Hook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the wasteful duplicate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Figher that just wouldn’t die<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Or, more accurately, that appropriators refused to let die?<\/p>\n

Pratt & Whitney won the contract to produce the F-35 engine fair and square.\u00a0 But forces in Congress continued to promote a wasteful alternative version developed by General Electric\/Rolls-Royce.\u00a0 The Pentagon doesn\u2019t want<\/a> the duplicate engine.\u00a0 The Senate voted it down.\u00a0 The House voted it down.\u00a0 The Bush White House sought to stop it.\u00a0 Even the infamously spendthrift Obama White House has sought to stop it.<\/p>\n

Most recently, General Electric\/Rolls-Royce claimed to offer<\/a> to “self-fund” development of the duplicate engine for the next few years.\u00a0 The problem is that “self-funding” is a scheme to eventually place American taxpayers on the hook at a later date.\u00a0 That is the conclusion<\/a> of none other than Ashton Carter, Defense Department Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.\u00a0 Responding to an inquiry from Senator Joe Lieberman, Carter confirmed that allowing the duplicate engine to continue would eventually mean government funding:<\/p>\n

Regarding ‘self-funding,’ as you know, the Department estimates that developing the F136 engine and preparing it for completion would cost $480 million in Fiscal Year 2012 and would take six years and $2.9 billion to complete.\u00a0 Unless this full expense is covered by the F136 contractor, the ‘self-funded’ effort would simply be a means to reestablish government funding for development of the F136 at a later date.\u00a0 Furthermore, in order to ensure that the engine was truly self-funded by the contractor, Section 252 would need to state that any and all costs associated with the further development of the F136 engine and preparation for competition would be unrecoverable directly or indirectly in any present (via overhead charges) or future contract with the US Government.\u00a0 This would extend the prohibition against the Government paying for the support or use of the Government’s property to the contractor’s costs for developing the F136 engine and preparing it for completion.<\/p>\n

The Department appreciates your support for the JSF program and your interest in ensuring its success.\u00a0 It is our firm view that Sections 215 and 252 would significantly impede this objective.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will help ensure American air superiority into the future, but it is also the largest acquisition program in Defense Department history.\u00a0 We simply cannot afford to let the wasteful duplicate engine proposal to continue jeopardizing the program’s vitality and cost-efficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember the wasteful duplicate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Figher that just wouldn’t die? Or, more accurately, that appropriators refused to let die? Pratt & Whitney won the contract to produce the F-35 engine fair and square.\u00a0 But forces in Congress continued to promote a wasteful alternative version developed by General Electric\/Rolls-Royce.\u00a0 The Pentagon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,2634,2401,2530,61],"class_list":["post-10286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-deficit","tag-engine","tag-f-35","tag-joint-strike-fighter","tag-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10286"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10290,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10286\/revisions\/10290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}