
General Electric [GE] has prevailed in its bid to develop a drop-in replacement engine for the U.S. Army’s UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters with a half-billion-dollar engineering contract announced Feb. 1. The $517 million contract covers the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), which seeks an engine that is 50 percent more powerful, 25% more fuel efficient, and lasts 20 percent longer than current engines. GE’s single-spool T901 engine beat out the…