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 The F-35, the world's most expensive weapons project with a price
tag of about $400 billion, has been grounded since the massive
failure of the Pratt & Whitney engine on a U.S. Air Force F-35 plane
at a Florida air base on June 23.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said on Tuesday U.S. Air
Force and Navy officials had granted the radar-evading jet a limited
flight clearance that required engine inspections and carried
restrictions on its flights. No details about the restrictions were
immediately available.
Kirby said the lifting of a fleetwide grounding order was
encouraging, and U.S. officials remained hopeful that the F-35 could
make its international debut at this week's Farnborough air show,
but no decision had been made.
The jet's failure to appear at a big military air show in Britain
last week and its absence from the first days of the Farnborough
event in southern England have been a blow for U.S. officials and
their international partners, who were hoping to showcase the
capabilities of the new multi-role fighter.
Global orders for the F-35 are expected to exceed 3,000, with Italy,
Turkey, Canada and Australia among the U.S. allies planning to
purchase the plane.
Lockheed and Pratt welcomed the U.S. decision to lift the grounding
order, but referred all questions to the Pentagon's F-35 program
office.
Matthew Bates, spokesman for Pratt & Whitney, said the company had
great confidence in the F135 engine it builds for the new fighter
jet and had worked closely with the military to return the jet to
flying status.
"It would be great for the jets to come to the Farnborough Air Show
so the audience here can see the capabilities the F-35 brings to the
U.S. and our partners," Bates said.
SAFETY IS PRIORITY
Top executives from the biggest contractors involved in the F-35
program have traveled to Britain for the plane's foreign debut,
which had appeared in doubt until Tuesday's news.
Four U.S. Marine Corps jets are waiting to take off for Britain from
a Maryland air base as soon as they are cleared to do so. Officials
are studying the flight restrictions to determine if the jets could
fly to Britain.
The planes were slated to follow a route relatively close to the
U.S. and Canadian coast, up past Greenland before heading to Europe,
rather than a direct flight across the Atlantic Ocean, according to
sources familiar with the plans.
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Kirby gave no details about the restrictions and engine inspections,
but said they would remain in effect until the root cause of the
June 23 engine failure was identified and corrected. "Safety remains
the overriding priority," he said.
Air Force Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan had told reporters on
Monday that U.S. officials were "not giving up" on trying to bring
the F-35 to Britain.
Sources familiar with the matter said the decision to lift the
grounding order was made at a high-level meeting on Monday, and
reflected growing evidence the engine failure was a one-off event
and not due to a systemic or fundamental design flaw.
Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall told reporters on Monday
that no similar problems had been found on any of the other 98
engines in service, and underscored that the program was still in
the development stage when technical problems are meant to be found
and fixed.
Pratt President Paul Adams told Reuters in an interview at the air
show that the F135 engine failure, and a separate incident in May
involving its CSeries commercial engine, were unrelated and did not
point to a larger problem at the company.
Adams, who took over as president in January, said it had been a
"challenging few weeks," but said both engines were still going
through the developmental stage that is aimed at flushing out
problems and resolving them.
(Editing by Mark Potter)
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