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cancellation. Connecticut senators challenged the Air Force, saying that the AETD program was the first step toward developing a new engine for the F-35 . The Air Force was adamant that the program was purely technology development. In August 2012, when the Air Force awarded follow-on AETD contracts to GE and P&W, congressional objections to AETD were dropped (Warwick, 2012). The Air Force award to GE was unsurprising as GE had performed strongly in ADVENT. However, P&W’s award was a huge payoff on the gamble they had placed in self- funding their own rig tests while execution of the ADVENT program had been ongoing without them. AFRL considered AETD the bridge that transitioned adaptive engine technology from the laboratory over the proverbial “valley of death” to the Warfighter in 2020 (Norris, 2015). The Air Force needed to apply real-world constraints to the ADVENT proof of concept to increase the likelihood of transition. Lacking a specific aircraft platform, the Air Force chose the only fighter currently in production, the F-35 Lightning, as the air vehicle to apply constraints such as size, weight, and location of aircraft bulkheads. Despite constraining the engine to the F-35 Lightning, the Service recognized that the adaptive engines could be applicable to future sixth-generation fighters, the next long-range bomber, tanker or cargo aircraft, or other legacy aircraft (anonymous personal communication, 2024, January 11). During the execution of AETD, the AFRL began partnering with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Propulsion Directorate to hand the next follow-on, the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), to the center responsible for fielding systems. In 2014, the Propulsion Directorate’s program office received direction from Office of the Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) to competitively award a contract by September 2015 to complete technology maturation and risk reduction efforts and support future engineering, manufacturing, and development (EMD) decisions. Unfortunately, despite this direction, funding was not phased appropriately across the Future Years Defense Program to enable program initiation in 2015. The DoD published a Resource Management Decision in January 2015, removed the previous start constraint, and rephased funding. However, the delay resulted in significant slips to acquisition planning milestones and contract awards. In June 2015, the Air Force Service Acquisition Executive Dr. William LaPlante approved the AETP Acquisition Strategy, which included awarding two noncompetitive contracts with the new funding in place.
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Defense ARJ , Summer 2025, Vol. 32 No. 2: 104—130
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