GE Aviation ends F-35 engine work

CINCINNATI – GE Aviation has abandoned efforts to use its own funding to keep alive development of its alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a spokesman said Friday, effectively ending the project.

The unit of the General Electric Co. has decided its offer to pay for continued development didn’t make business sense, spokesman Rick Kennedy said.

He said some 800 jobs related to the project have been absorbed into other programs.

The Department of Defense in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations had declined to include the alternate in its recent budgets, calling it unneeded spending. Members of Ohio’s congressional delegation from both parties had pushed for funding and to keep the program alive.

But the House voted in February to cancel $450 million in funding for the alternative engine, deciding the project could be sacrificed for the larger effort to rein in the federal deficit. After Defense subsequently terminated the program, GE Aviation said it would continue working on the project with partner Rolls-Royce while self-funding.

The jet fighter’s main engine is built by Pratt & Whitney.

GE Aviation’s F136 engine has been in development for some 15 years. GE and its backers have argued that their alternative would provide competition that would help save taxpayer money – and add jobs.