The American magazine "Air Force Magazine" published a material by Greg Hadley "Beyond AETP for Engines to Power NGAD Fighter" ("The US Air Force creates engines for the NGAD fighter outside the AETP program"), that the US Air Force is implementing a new previously unknown Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program to create promising engines for its promising new fighter generations of Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD).
An artistic image of unknown things that may look like a new generation fighter under the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program (with) Mike Tsukamoto, Erin Baxter / www.airforcemag.com
As part of the USAF Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), key technologies are being demonstrated and improved, but engines will not be created for the promising next generation fighter Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), a key US Air Force procurement representative said on August 11.
The new engine for NGAD will be created as part of the lesser-known Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program, which is still at the preliminary stage of development, the head of the power plant management of the US Air Force Life Cycle Management Center told reporters at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference John Sneden.
"As for NGAD, [we are] considering what options we can have, simply put, for the next generation of fighter gaining air supremacy?" Sneden said. - "This is what the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program is about - an up-to-date look at how we can provide the motor potential of the next generation."
Things are going well on this front, Sneden said, and a key stage will be passed in the near future.
"Right now the program is being implemented very well, preliminary projects will be ready at the end of this year. And as we take the next steps, we will see prototyping and testing in the coming years," he said.
Two engine manufacturers participating in the AETP program - General Electric Aviation and Pratt & Whitney - also participate in the NGAP program. According to Sneden, with the submission of preliminary projects, the US Air Force will be ready to negotiate with them in about two years - sometime at the end of 2024.
"Their approach to AETP is a bit different, [with] different technical solutions, one for GE, the other for Pratt & Whitney," Sneden said. - "We see the same thing on NGAP."
"There are two unique technological approaches, and this is important," added Matthew Meininger, a representative of the Office of Power Plants in charge of NGAP. - "We expect this to be a difficult decision... Resources will be limited in the [2024] fiscal year. So at the moment, based on the available resources, we have to make a difficult decision to move forward."
It is reported that the NGAP program has been in existence for several years, but its funding was not separated from the AETP program in budget documents until fiscal year 2021, which makes it mostly secret. And despite the connection between the two programs, Sneden stressed that the engines that will be created under NGAP will not be the same as under AETP.
"This program uses the technology we used in AETP, but it's a completely new system that goes beyond what you see in AETP. Therefore, [it] differs in design," he said.
AETR
So what remains for the two engines created under the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) - GE's XA100 and Pratt & Whitney's XA101? According to Sneden, this question will be answered by the leadership of the US Department of Defense when it decides whether it wants to install AETP engines on Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters.
This issue has been hotly debated in Congress, in the Pentagon and in industry recently: GE insists on installing the XA100 engine on the F-35A and F-35C, while Pratt & Whitney, which produces the current F135 engine for the F-35, argues that the US armed forces should instead choose a smaller "a block upgrade" of the F135 engine, which she calls the F135 Enhanced Engine Package.
Part of Pratt & Whitney's argument was that the AETP engines were not designed to be installed on an F-35B aircraft with a shortened takeoff and vertical landing, and the F-35 Joint Program Management stated that any program participant who wanted to make their own modifications would have to bear the corresponding costs alone.
Nevertheless, Sneden argued that the cost [of the solution with the installation of the AETR engine on the F-35] would be justified by an increase in performance.
"You can optimize [the solution] to [improve] performance, or you can optimize to [preserve] unification for all three variants of [the F-35]," Sneden said. - "We believe that a combat fighter deserves the level of performance that AETP can provide."
According to Sneden, this performance improvement will be reflected in a 25 percent increase in fuel efficiency, a 10 percent increase in thrust and a 100 percent improvement in temperature control. GE officials cited the same numbers in arguments in favor of the XA100, but Sneden explained that these numbers could also be achieved with Pratt & Whitney's XA101.
If the U.S. Department of Defense decides to start installing AETP engines on the F-35, the U.S. Air Force Lifecycle Management Center will be ready to move the program to the OCD phase by 2024, which "will probably take five to six years" and will include flight tests, Sneden said. In general, the engine may begin to be installed on the F-35 by the end of the decade.
However, if Pentagon leaders decide to keep the F135 engines, the future of the AETP engines will be uncertain at best.
The [AETP] program was "built around the requirements for the F-35," Sneden said. "So it's not like we brought it in and said, 'Oh, you know, we could potentially use this for the F-35.' In fact, it was designed specifically for the F-35."
This contrasts with previous statements by the US Air Force that AETP engines will be used on the promising NGAD fighter. Now, according to Sneden, the advanced industrial base of the US engine industry is facing a turning point: if the AETP program does not lead to the launch of the engine developed according to it into mass production, and only one engine will be selected for the NGAP program in 2024, then competition will dry up, he claims.
"If we stay with one supplier and don't move forward with AETP, then that one supplier could actually lead us to have essentially a reduced industrial base for advanced engines," Sneden said. "That's why we're concerned about it."
From the bmpd side, we point out that readers of our blog can read more about the American program for creating a promising new generation fighter Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) in the articleAlexander Ermakov "NGAD: a program that will determine the future of fighter aviation" in the just released and publicly available special issue of the magazine "Arms Export" for 2022 - a free electronic version of the magazine is available at the link.
