Pictured are Lockheed Martin crew chiefs around a Belgian F-35A which arrived at Luke AFB, Ariz. on Dec. 3 last year, as Belgian pilots begin training to move from the country’s F-16s to the F-35A (U.S. Air Force Photo)
RTX‘s Collins Aerospace said on Feb. 18 that its Enhanced Power and Cooling System (EPACS)–the company’s proposed replacement for the F-35 fighter’s current Power and Thermal Management System (PTMS)–has achieved Technology Readiness Level 6 and “is now ready for aircraft integration.”
Honeywell, the PTMS incumbent, and Collins have been gearing up to compete on an upgraded or new PTMS for the Lockheed Martin F-35, yet contract award may not come until fiscal 2029.
Honeywell’s Torrance, Calif., plant builds the current F-35 PTMS, which supplies main engine start and auxiliary and emergency power needs, in addition to 30 Kilowatts of aircraft cooling. Honeywell has said that it will upgrade the current PTMS to meet the coming cooling, weapons, and mission system requirements and that a new PTMS, such as EPACS, could cost $3 billion.
The F-35 program has said that it desires a PTMS that generates up to 80 Kilowatts to cool the aircraft and power new weapons and mission systems, such as sensors.
EPACS “will provide more than double the platform’s current cooling capacity—enough to support planned upgrades for the life of the aircraft,” Collins said on Friday. “This latest milestone follows Collins’ announcement in 2024 that EPACS had successfully demonstrated 80 kilowatts of cooling capacity.”
Collins said that it “has invested millions into state-of-the-art thermal systems development labs, allowing engineers to simulate relevant, real-world combat aircraft conditions.”
“Using these labs, Collins validated the EPACS demonstrator’s performance across a range of temperatures, pressures, air flow rates and humidities to achieve Technology Readiness Level 6,” the company said. “Most customers typically require this level of maturity for a new technology before entering the Engineering & Manufacturing Development [EMD] phase, which would be the next step for EPACS, once a competition to replace the current F-35 PTMS has been launched and a winner has been selected.”
A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.