F-35 Joint Program Office And Pratt & Whitney Media Announcement

The U.S. Department of Defense and Pratt & Whitney have reached an agreement in principle for a production contract for the sixth lot of F135 propulsion systems to power the F-35 Lightning II, which continues a reduction in costs associated with engine production.

The low rate initial production (LRIP) contract covers 38 total engines, including program management, engineering support, production non-recurring effort, sustainment and spare parts.

Cost details will be released when the LRIP 6 contract is finalized; however, in general, the unit prices for the 32 common configuration engines which are used to power both the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) aircraft and the aircraft-carrier variant (CV) aircraft reduced in LRIP 6 by roughly 2.5 percent compared to the previous LRIP 5 contract for 35 engines.

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