DAYTON, Ohio–The U.S. Air Force plans to use technologies developed in the Advanced Engine Transition Program (AETP) for the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program, which will move into engine prototyping with General Electric
[GE] and RTX‘s [RTX] Pratt & Whitney offerings.
NGAP is to outfit the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) manned fighter.
The Air Force canceled AETP for the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 fighter and decided to move forward with Pratt & Whitney’s proposed Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) for the company’s F135 engine. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that the decision to go with ECU for the F-35 was a budgetary one, as AETP would have entailed several billion dollars more in development than the Air Force had already spent. General Electric developed an XA100 AETP engine for future blocks of the F-35, while Pratt & Whitney had received funding for an XA101 adaptive cycle engine.
“There’s a lot of focus on the fact that it [XA technology] has a third stream of cooling air, but that’s not the only critical aspect of this engine,” John Sneden, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s (AFLCMC) director of propulsion, told reporters on Aug. 1 during AFLCMC’s annual industry days conference. “The critical aspects of the engine are the advanced materials that have better thermal management properties and the adaptive fan that allows you to go from the fuel efficiency of a commercial type engine to having the thrust capability that you need in the fight. Those latter two are things that are directly portable to NGAP.”
Northrop Grumman [NOC] said last week that it will not bid on NGAD–a decision that appears to leave just two bidders, Lockheed Martin and Boeing [BA] (Defense Daily, July 27). Sneden said on Aug. 1 that “we are making one [NGAP] design that will feed all three [NGAD] platforms.”
NGAP engine prototyping with GE and Pratt & Whitney is a change from the previous strategy, which envisioned just one engine provider in the prototyping phase. That change came because of increased NGAP funding, Sneden said.
Unlike the House Appropriations Committee’s defense bill, which reinstates AETP with $150 million, the Senate Appropriations Committee’s bill does not contain AETP funding.
House and Senate appropriators provide the Air Force-requested $595 million for NGAP. Senate appropriators would direct Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to include NGAP in future budget requests under an NGAP budget line, rather than under Advanced Engine Development, as in the past.
In addition to the $595 million for NGAP, Senate appropriators would fund Advanced Engine Development for “future engine technologies” at $280 million.
Last August, AFLCMC awarded GE, Pratt & Whitney, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman umbrella NGAP prototyping contracts worth up to $975 million over the next decade “for technology maturation and risk reduction activities through design, analysis, rig testing, prototype engine testing, and weapon system integration (Defense Daily, Aug. 19, 2022).”