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Netherlands F135 Engine Heavy Maintenance Facility Achieves Initial Depot Capability

Our Bureau - : Aug 4, 2021 - : 8:46 am

StandardAero has successfully achieved all Initial Depot Capability (IDC) requirements for the repair and overhaul of the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine, which powers all three variants of the 5th Generation F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft.

The company’s F135 Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul and Upgrade (MRO&U) facility, or depot, in the Netherlands has thus become the first fully operational F135 engine depot outside of the United States.

The IDC milestone was reached following the qualification of StandardAero’s assembly and disassembly capability for the F135’s fan and power modules as well as engine test operations at its 30,000 square foot facility in the Netherlands, located at the Logistics Center Woensdrecht (LCW) of the Royal Netherlands Air Force. The facility features the first purpose-built international test cell for the F135 engine that was designed and constructed from the ground up to support F135 aftermarket test operations.

“Since our acquisition of DutchAero Services in March of 2015, we have been purposefully driving toward standing up our capabilities at LCW and operationalizing our F135 engine MRO services,” said Marc Drobny, President of Military & Energy for StandardAero. “We are proud to achieve the IDC milestone status and grateful for the collaborative efforts of all of our partners.”

“Congratulations to the joint industry and government team on achieving IDC for the Netherlands F135 depot,” said O Sung Kwon, Vice President, Pratt & Whitney Military Engines Sustainment Operations. “This critical sustainment milestone is the culmination of years of planning, construction, deployments, training and qualification. I’m exceptionally proud of how this team navigated the various challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic to standup this F135 MRO&U capability on-time for the customer.”

T he Netherlands depot will immediately begin supporting fan and power module repairs for the F135 engine fleet, providing increased capacity to the global F135 MRO&U network. Modules will be disassembled, repaired, and reassembled by StandardAero personnel with technical assistance from Pratt & Whitney, followed by testing and return-to-service of the module for use by global operators of the F135 engine.

“This is a significant event for the Netherlands, for our industrial partners StandardAero and Pratt & Whitney and for the F-35 partnership”, according to Air Commodore Richard Laurijssen, commander of the Logistic Center Woensdrecht. “The fact that this capability now comes online must be very welcome, given the increasing demand for repairs of F135 engine modules the F-35 partnership is currently facing in order to meet the required availability of serviceable F135 engines.”

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