United Tech working to lower F-35 engine cost

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - United Technologies Corp's (UTX.N) Pratt & Whitney unit, facing criticism for rising costs on the engine that powers the F-35 fighter jet, said on Tuesday it is investing a "considerable amount" to drive the engine's cost lower in the longer term.

William Begert, vice president of business development and aftermarket services for Pratt & Whitney, declined to give a specific sum, but said the company had done extensive work with the government in recent months to bring down costs on the F135 engine.

"We are investing a considerable amount of Pratt dollars toward the cost issue," Begert told Reuters by telephone.

The measures included engineering changes, which might in some cases also require government investment, extensive efforts to drive supplier costs lower, and work to improve the production process for the engines, Begert said.

He said Pratt had also assigned its best engineers, procurement and manufacturing experts to the effort.

Marine Corps Brigadier General David Heinz last month cited significant cost growth on the 30-year estimate for the Pratt engine, saying it was slated to rise to $8.3 million per engine from $6.7 million, the biggest increase since 2001.

Begert said Pratt expected to submit "a very attractive" price in mid-September for the fourth batch of low-rate production engines, aided in part by lower supplier costs.

He declined to give any specific figures, but said the price would be lower than the third lot of low-rate production engines, but not as low as the price the engine would reach after production of 250 engines.

He said Pratt had largely wrapped up its negotiations with suppliers for the next batch of engines, and the company was now "dotting the Is and crossing the Ts" before submitting a final price package to the government on September 15.

The company is also keeping a close eye on an ongoing fight between the Obama administration and Congress over funding for an alternate F-35 engine being developed by General Electric Co (GE.N) and Britain's Rolls-Royce Group PLC (RR.L).

President Barack Obama last week again threatened to veto any legislation that continued to fund the second engine, calling it "unconscionable" to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the second engine "when one reliable engine will do just fine."

"The stakes are huge," Begert said, adding, "We don't have any control over what goes on over on Capitol Hill. What we have control over is our performance, and that's what we're concentrating on."

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)