Pratt & Whitney to 3D Print Engine Parts for the F-35

US defense contractor Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of RTX, told Breaking Defense that the company plans to use additive manufacturing (AM) for the F135 engine, which powers Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The news comes a week after Pratt announced that the company had completed the preliminary design review (PDR) for the F135 Engine Core Upgrade (ECU), indicating that AM was apparently part of that PDR.

Crucially, Pratt’s completing the PDR means that the engine is on-schedule for service by 2029. Meanwhile, the company also announced at the UK’s Farnborough International Airshow (July 22-26) that it has redesigned the TJ150 turbojet engine so that it can be made entirely with AM, a process which involved reducing the number of parts from 50 to “less than 5”. The company first announced plans to print the whole TJ150 engine in 2021.

Pratt & Whitney hopes that increasing production of the TJ150, used for missiles and decoy drones, can aid the Air Force’s plan to ramp up use of collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) — drones that fly in tandem with manned aircraft. Pratt & Whitney plans to start test flights of the new TJ150 engine as soon as 2025.

Pratt & Whitney’s TJ150 engine. Image courtesy of FlightGlobal

In a press release, the vice president of the company’s F135 program, Chris Johnson, said, “Pratt & Whitney is upgrading the F135 engine with technology from multiple development programs to deliver increased capability and performance for the warfighter. Upgrading the F-35’s propulsion system to ECU is a critical step toward ensuring the F-35 remains the world’s premier air dominance fighter.”

In a briefing at Farnborough, Jill Albertelli, Pratt & Whitney’s president of military engines, noted, “As the US Air Force did an assessment on the defense industrial base, [AM] is something that they highlighted significantly,” as a way to bolster supply chain resilience.

The current Pratt & Whitney F135 engine, image courtesy of US Air Force via Breaking Defense

With all the ups and downs of the AM industry, one aspect that remains consistent is that the defense sector continues to be at the forefront of driving AM adoption for end-use parts. On the other hand, there are reasons to believe that other strategic sectors could be joining the DoD rather soon.

For one thing, the Biden administration has just announced over $4 billion in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants to help communities across the country reduce pollution, an effort including, among other things, funds for EV charging stations and energy-efficient heat pumps. Additionally, DoD recently announced that it will release a “climate adaptation plan” for 2024-2027, in the agency’s endeavors to assert its central role for coordinating whole-of-government action on climate change.

Thus, especially concerning energy issues, it is easy to envision AM tech-transfer happening in a way that enables every other agency in the US federal government to benefit from the AM know-how that the DoD has accumulated for itself over the last decade. The pathways for companies to tap into that potential opportunity may not have crystallized yet, but it seems clear that those pathways are on the horizon.