An advanced turbine engine joint venture is preparing its challenge to General Electric [GE] in a competition to re-engine the Army’s AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter fleets.
The Army awarded the Advanced Turbine Engine Company, LLC (ATEC), a Honeywell [HON] and Pratt & Whitney [UTX] joint venture, a $108 million contract for the Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine (AATE) technology demonstrator program in May 2008. The Army’s current engine provider, General Electric, was also awarded a contract.
“The incumbent has a horse in the race,” Tom Farmer, Pratt and Whitney’s president for military engines, told sister publication Defense Daily in a recent interview. “We’re combining the small engine technologies of Honeywell with the downsized technologies of a large engine. So we have combined our basket of technologies, and we are bringing together that engine technology for the next generation of Apache-Black Hawk helicopter engine.”
The AATE demonstrator program is designed to validate the technologies needed to achieve the Army’s aggressive performance goals of 65 percent improvement in shaft horsepower (SHP)/weight ratio and a 25 percent improvement in specific fuel consumption (SFC) for the next-generation 3,000 SHP turboshaft engine, Pratt & Whitney executives said last week. The new engine is expected to replace the T700 engine now powering Black Hawks and Apaches.
Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney announced the formation of ATEC and the intent to submit a proposal to the Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate to develop an advanced turboshaft engine for the AATE technology demonstrator at the Paris Air Show in 2007.
“There is already a budget being set aside and planned for [system development and demonstration] following this four-year demonstrator program, leading to a production contract to re-engine Black Hawks and Apaches to give them better legs,” said Farmer. “We’re talking thousands of engines here.”
Farmer noted that his company’s last attempt at a military helicopter engine was back in the 1980s. He also said that Pratt & Whitney Canada will not be involved with the project “because of the level of technology involved,” Farmer said.
“This is U.S. high-tech propulsion demonstration to address the limits of the current propulsion systems in the conflicts,” he added.
The Army is planning to put new engines on some 10,000-12,000 of its combat helicopters when it awards a production contract to either ATEC or General Electric in 2012.
New engines would help the Army in places like Afghanistan, where current helicopter engines are having a difficult time in the high altitudes and temperatures they encounter in that country.
With new engines, “you get range, you get an ability to address a high-hot mission” with better engine cooling technologies, said Farmer. “Special forces are entering a lot of that rough terrain and the helicopters are having trouble keeping up.”