The Heart Of The F-35 Is Its Remarkable Engine (From RealClear Defense)

For all the sound and fury about the cost of the F-35, the truth is that the price has been coming down at a brisk clip. In the early low rate initial production lots, the price of the F-35A was $125 million.  Now, according to official sources, the goal is to drive the price down below $80 million by 2020. With so much attention focused on the F-35, its costs and performance, there is a tendency to forget that the heart of the aircraft is the Pratt & Whitney F-135 engine.  Since 2009, P&W has reduced the cost of the engines for the Air Force and Navy variants of the F-35 by more than 50 percent. I have written more on this subject for RealClear Defense here.