WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush called on Congress Monday for the third straight year to cancel a multibillion-dollar alternate engine being developed for Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jet by a team of General Electric Co and Rolls-Royce Group Plc.

The second engine would compete against one built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp , in a projected $100 billion market over coming decades.

"The (Defense) Department made a decision they're willing to accept the risk" of going with just one engine, given budget pressures and a perceived lack of significant benefits from continued competition," Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Davis, head of the Pentagon's F-35 program office, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

(Reporting by Jim Wolf, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
© Copyright 2007 Reuters.

Photo:
Workers prepare a F-35 joint strike fighter four days before the opening of the 47th Paris Air Show at the Le Bourget airport near Paris, June 14, 2007. President Bush called on Congress Monday for the third straight year to cancel a multibillion-dollar alternate engine being developed for Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jet by a team of General Electric Co and Rolls-Royce Group Plc. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol