To the Joint Strike Fighter engine team at Pratt & Whitney, it is a little more complicated, even though they have some 7,000 hours of development testing on the F135 engine behind them. The team has begun assembling the first flight test F135 engine for the F-35 JSF. P&W says it plans to deliver the engine to Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Tex., in December.
The Air Force’s nascent KC-Z program, aimed at developing a next-generation family of systems for aerial refueling, will look to launch its analysis-of-alternatives study in 2024, years earlier than originally planned. Originally, the analysis of alternatives for KC-Z was set for “maybe in the 2030s,” Paul Waugh, program executive officer…