Fuel-Efficient engine to increase range, power of army helicopters.

• Author: Insinna, Valerie

During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Black Hawk helicopters were regularly flown at higher altitudes and in hotter temperatures than their engines were designed to withstand. With underpowered engines in those conditions, each helicopter could only carry five soldiers at a time--about half of an 11-person squad.

The Army over the next decade plans to phase out legacy equipment and introduce a new, more powerful engine that will be able to take a full squad twice as far, all while burning less fuel. Through the Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP, the service will replace the T700 engines that power its Black Hawk and Apache helicopters.

When the Army fielded General Electric's T700 engine in the 1970s, it required that an engine be able to transport a squad at 4,000 feet in 95-degree Fahrenheit temperatures.

"What they've learned through Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in other theaters, is that's not sufficient to cover the globe," said Jerry Wheeler, vice president of the Advanced Turbine Engine Co. (ATEC), a joint venture between Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney.

ATEC is one of the participants in an Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate initiative called the Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine program, a science and technology effort that is a precursor to the improved turbine engine program of record.

No engine will be fielded at the conclusion of the AATE program, but it has given ATEC and General Electric a head start in developing the technologies the Army will need for its future engine. The ITEP competition is slated to begin this year, as the science and technology program comes to a dose.

The goal of the AATE program is to develop a 3,000-shaft horsepower engine around the same size as the T700, which weighs about 450 pounds. The engines will be 50 percent more powerful and 25 percent more fuel-efficient. The new engines also will have a longer lifespan and lower maintenance costs.

The requirements for the improved turbine engine have not been finalized, but the AATE program is designed to help reduce the risk of developmental technologies that will likely be pulled into the ITEP program, said Gary Butler, engine systems team leader at the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate.

"We're providing a technology foundation to achieve the better fuel efficiency metrics and better horsepower to weight to get ... more power in that same envelope," he said.

With the flEP engine, commanders will not have to choose between...