Business is booming at GE Aerospace.
As one of the primary suppliers of military aircraft engines, the company is benefiting from a global surge in demand for fighter jets and helicopters.
Aircraft powered by GE Aerospace engines include the Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter, Boeing P-8 maritime patrol jet, Sikorsky UH-60 utility helicopter and Boeing AH-64E attack rotorcraft.
“We’re on some very desirable platforms that are continuing to have both production in the US, as well as export opportunities internationally,” says Amy Gowder, chief executive of the defence and systems business at GE Aerospace.
The engine maker has also signed on as the propulsion supplier to major new programmes, including the Turkish Aerospace Industries Kaan fighter jet for Turkey, the Korea Aerospace Industries KF-21 stealth fighter and Boeing’s T-7A jet trainer for the US Air Force.
Earlier this year, GE Aerospace also delivered the first examples of the new T901 Improved Turbine Engine, which is to be used to modernise existing US fleets of Black Hawks and Apaches.
Sikorsky is expected to begin testing the first T901s installed in a UH-60 this year, with loose plans at GE Aerospace to be in full engine production by 2030, based on army funding decisions.
The company is now directing revenue from its robust backlog toward developing its next generation of products. “The existing business does create a cash flow we need to invest,” Gowder says.
Some of that investment gets targeted toward what Gowder calls baseline technologies that have general applications across the portfolio. Examples include additive manufacturing processes and development of advanced materials like ceramic matrix composites.
However, GE Aerospace is also applying research and development funds toward next-generation concepts, such as hypersonic propulsion and rotating detonation engines, with an eye toward future business.
“We try and understand where the market is going and what capabilities really would push our existing technology to the next stage,” Gowder says.
While exquisite products like hypersonic propulsion and adaptive jet engines for sixth-generation fighters are promising lines of business, GE Aerospace is also looking in the opposite direction.
The company sees opportunity to develop low-cost engines with shorter lifespans and lesser reliability requirements, Gowder says. These could be used to power new classes of cheap, uncrewed jets meant to team with conventionally piloted aircraft.
In the USA, the US Air Force calls the concept Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). Earlier this year, the service selected General Atomics and Anduril to develop the first increment of CCA designs, with follow-up opportunities expected.
Unlike traditional military aircraft – incredibly expensive jets intended to fly for decades – CCAs are envisioned as costing about as much as guided missiles and potentially being classified as expendable, meaning the military would not necessarily expect them to return from missions. The Pentagon is still working out its vision for the concept.
But developing engines for such smaller, cheaper aircraft requires a new approach for GE Aerospace.
“I think it will really change our design guidelines and practices,” Gowder says ”Today, we design for reliability and maintainability.”
By contrast, to meet air force cost targets, CCA’s might require an engine that “doesn’t need to be maintained, that is almost disposable”, Gowder says, adding that development would likely prioritise performance and cost over reliability and maintainability.
“Less logistics, less maintenance, less life-cycle cost,” she says. “That really changes the way our engineers optimise the variables that they have to play with.”
Elsewhere, GE Aerospace is still pursuing the type of high-performance, long-life engines the company is best known for. At the forefront of this effort has been the XA100, an adaptive-cycle engine developed for the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter under the US Air Force’s Adaptive Engine Transition Program.
That system promised substantial improvements in thrust and acceleration, while simultaneously reducing fuel consumption, which GE Aerospace says it accomplishes by combining the best attributes of commercial engines and fighter jet propulsion into a single package.
The Pentagon ultimately opted not to retrofit F-35s with the XA100, instead opting for a less-intensive core upgrade to the F-35’s current Pratt & Whitney F135 engine. Still, GE Aerospace remains confident it can apply the XA100 technology to future fifth- and sixth-generation fighters.
Gowder’s biggest concern on that front is maintaining enough new and interesting work to maintain her company’s highly-specialised engineering workforce. This is particularly salient in light of recent uncertainty about the Pentagon’s commitment to sixth-generation fighter initiatives.
“Clarity is needed for workforce,” she says. “We can’t be in prototype mode or pay-for-design mode forever.”
