Linsey Davis/Eyewitness News
Indianapolis, August 23, 2005 - GE Rolls-Royce received a $2.4 billion defense contract to develop the engine for the Pentagon's new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter plane.
The plant in Indianapolis will get $500 million of that contract.
The F-35 has been called the cornerstone of the future for the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and foreign allies, and the engine of the Joint Strike Fighter is putting Indianapolis on the map.
"Some very advanced technologies that were dreams ten years ago are now ready to be put into production aircraft, which is fantastic," said Tom Hartmann, the Fighter Engine Team's Senior Vice President.
For ten years inside Rolls Royce's three million square feet of factory space on Indianapolis' near southwestside, they've been powering the dream of flight for the F-35, a next generation, multi-role stealth aircraft designed to replace about a half dozen aging fighter jets.
And now their hard work is paying off to the tune of $2.4 billion. The government awarded the GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine team a contract to continue developing the F136 engine. Over the next seven years, $1 billion will be split between the Indianapolis site and its sister division in Bristol, England.
"This is probably the biggest fighter engine that's ever been developed," according to Hartmann. "It runs at the highest metal temperatures ever done in history and it goes after some of the most aggressive challenges."
"This is the culmination," Hartmann continued, "this is where we take it from an experimental development type product to certify it so it's ready to fly."
The F136 engine isn't expected to power a flight test until 2010.
Only then will the public be able to witness the supersonic speeds, in excess of Mach I, and that's without using the engine's afterburners.
Rolls Royce says it has completed the testing phase of the project under budget and on schedule.
Production engines will not be available until 2012.
