PRATT & WHITNEY ENGINE PLANT, MIDDLETOWN, CONN.:
[updated 9:05 am Wednesday with comment from Pratt & Whitney President David Hess]

This factory builds jet engines for high-performance fighters — an engine a week for the F-35 alone — but the armed forces might want to take a look at an innovation on Pratt & Whitney’s commercial side. The new technology, called a “geared turbofan,” was motivated by rising fuel costs and the airlines’ demand for more fuel-efficient engines, itself no small matter for the military. As a byproduct, however, the new engines are also more resistant to a hazard that’s a much bigger deal at rugged forward airbases than tidy civilian airports: Call it the wrath of FOD, foreign object damage, the term of art for the ugly, often explosive things that happen when a jet engine accidentally sucks in anything from loose gravel to Canadian geese. Keep reading →