A Second Contract for U.S. Army Engine R&D

A Honeywell/Pratt & Whitney joint venture was awarded a $108 million contract by the U.S. Army for work on the Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine (AATE) technology demonstrator program. GE in September 2007 won the first contract under that program. According to the Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate, a few months after that a second bid went out because there was a lot of interest and the Army decided it wanted competing demonstrations. The second contract was awarded to the joint venture, the Advanced Turbine Engine Co., LLC this month. The identical contracts are for eight engine demonstrators. Once the development and test phase is complete, the directorate plans to bid a much larger follow-on contract for the final project. The AATE program is designed to validate the technologies needed to achieve the Army’s aggressive performance goals of a 65-percent improvement in shaft horsepower/weight ratio and a 25-percent improvement in specific fuel consumption for the next-generation, 3,000-shp turboshaft engine. The program also calls for a 20-percent improvement in design life, a 35-percent reduction in production and maintenance cost and a 15-percent reduction in development cost. This engine is planned to replace the T700 engine now powering UH-60 Black Hawks and AH-64 Apaches. For related news