Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn has turned down a plea made by nine senators to reconsider the termination of the second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. In an Aug. 23 letter, Lynn writes that continuing a competitive acquisition strategy for the fighter's engine does not make sense, even when taking into account General Electric and Rolls Royce's offer to "self-fund" more than $100 million of the development costs for their F136 engine, which the department terminated earlier this...
