Honeywell has announced that it has demonstrated the ability to upgrade the current cooling capacity of the F-35 Lightning II’s Power and Thermal Management System (PTMS) to 80kW, significantly exceeding the current 32kW cooling needs.
Honeywell has been the supplier of the F-35’s PTMS for the past two decades, and the company states that it will now be best-positioned to support future mission systems’ modernisation requirements.
Although Honeywell’s PTMS meets the current airframe requirement in service for the F-35, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office (JPO) indicated in 2023 that more cooling power would be needed in the F-35 to support advanced avionics in future generations of aircraft.
“Today, we have successfully demonstrated that we not only meet the F-35’s current operational needs, but we are ready to service future F-35 modernisation upgrades without the need for expensive changes to the aircraft for either forward-fit or retrofit scenarios,” said Matt Milas, President, Defense and Space, Honeywell Aerospace Technologies.
“By enabling F-35s to update cooling capacity within our existing PTMS architecture, we can now eliminate the risks that would otherwise come from qualifying and fielding a new system that would cost taxpayers billions of dollars without any additional benefit.”
To demonstrate the 80kW cooling capability, Honeywell used a digital twin of the PTMS, which utilised data from over 2,500 hours of performance testing in Honeywell’s test facility, and more than 750,000 hours of in-flight experience.
The digital twin incorporated low-risk advancements to heat exchangers and controls changes that further optimise system performance, increasing cooling potential, while maintaining all existing interfaces with airplane thermal systems.
“Honeywell’s PTMS is key to many aircraft systems integrated into the F-35, and any changes to the PTMS would affect other critical components of the aircraft,” said Matt Schacht, vice president, Engineering, Honeywell Aerospace Technologies.
“We believe the lowest risk path forward for the F- 35 is to maintain the existing architecture of the PTMS to preserve its many critical functions, while increasing cooling capacity for future generations of the aircraft.”