JSF engine milestone reached

22 Jul 2008

The GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team has successfully completed Short Take Off, Vertical Landing (STOVL) testing on an F136 engine at the GE testing facility at Peebles, Ohio.

The F136 engine will be available to power all variants of the F-35 Lightning II aircraft for the US military and eight partner nations, including Australia.

The Fighter Engine Team also announced that it has received first deliveries of front fan frames from Magellan Aerospace in Canada, and key work packages from Dutch companies DutchAero and Atkins Nedtech.

All engine test objectives were reached as planned in the Peebles testing as the engine was configured in a variety of modes, leading to STOVL testing with common hardware systems for the F-35.

Testing also included the advanced controls architecture, which was demonstrated successfully in closed-loop mode operation.

This important milestone was reached with the controls system developed under the Fighter Engine Team’s ongoing System Development and Demonstration (SDD) contract.

The Fighter Engine Team’s recent tests were conducted with F136 engines originally produced during the pre-SDD contract.

Since then, the powerplants have been updated with new fan, augmentor and controls technology designed during the SDD process.

The first full SDD engine is scheduled to begin testing in early 2009, with first flight in the F-35 to follow in 2010.