On the recordFebruary 15, 2011
This is a debate and a discussion that has been going on for some period of time. As has been noted before, there are many of us who serve on the Armed Services Committee who have a little different view than does the Pentagon on this subject. So what are the benefits of the second engine? Several of those have been mentioned. First of all, it is the sense of security. You've got basically an aircraft now that is going to be serving the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Air Force. All of our services will be dependent on this one aircraft, which is the Joint Strike Fighter. That particular Joint Strike Fighter has one engine. Obviously, if you want it to work well, the engine has to run right. The Armed Services Committees have taken a look at this, and those with a few more whiskers here understand the problem that came along on the F-16, where we had an engine manufacturer that couldn't get the engine done, and the whole airframe was at risk. In this case, you have the airframe for the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Air Force, so this Congress wisely decided that we're going to have two engines. First of all, from a security point of view, what this allows us to do is to make sure that we have an engine that is on time and on delivery. Certainly, the competition is another good point. You save a lot of money.
