By Marina Malenic
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 Defense Daily in an interview last week. “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.”