The Defense Department has finalized its $1.4 billion jet engine maintenance contract with Boeing Co. and Pratt & Whitney, according to a contract listing on the Pentagon’s Web site.
The deal involves the engines that East Hartford-based Pratt makes for the C-17 Globemaster military cargo plane fleet, according to the contract listing.
Each C-17 is powered by four of Pratt’s F117 engines.
Pratt announced the pending maintenance agreement last October.
The deal is a one-year contract with the option to extend for two additional years through 2011, according to Pratt’s initial statement.
The contract covers “fleet management support, configuration control, thrust reversers, and engine wash services for the entire F117 fleet of 800 engines,” Pratt officials said.
The F117 is the military version of the PW2037, Pratt’s commercial engine that powers the Boeing 757.
Pratt is a subsidiary of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp.
The C-17 is one of two major military programs involving Pratt for which the Obama administration and the Pentagon have decided not to continue funding. The second endangered program is the F-22 Raptor jet fighter.
Just last week senators from three states where parts are made for the C-17 urged the Senate Appropriations Committee to fund 12 additional C-17s as part of the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill.
U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., joined with Sens. Barbara Boxer D-Calif., and Kit Bond, R-Mo., to make the request in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Vice Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss.
In their letter, the senators warned that termination of the C-17 would undermine national security, and “severely degrade our ability to maintain a viable and competitive aerospace industry.”
“The C-17 has been the key transport for troops and equipment to and from Iraq and Afghanistan and we do not see airlift needs abating anytime soon,” the senators said.
The letter was signed by 15 additional senators.
The C-17 appeal is part of a wider jet engine acquisition initiative that the House of Representatives passed in July in its version of a defense appropriations bill that eliminated funding for additional Pratt-powered F-22 fighter jets but included enough additional Pratt engines to save Connecticut jobs.
After the passage of the House bill, Connecticut Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, said a total of 80 additional jet engines for Pratt that the bill supports is enough to head off F-22-related layoffs in Connecticut because it will provide enough work to keep production rolling until 2013. That’s the year when work will start on Pratt’s engines for the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.