ITEP

The Army’s GE T901 First Engine to Test installed in the test cell prior to initial engine light off. The engine’s light off marks the start of 100 hours of run time throughout the next two months to verify and validate engine performance models. (Photo courtesy of General Electric via DVIDS)

AAAA: The Army expects the delayed Improved Turbine Engine Program to be delivered in November to the two competitors for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft.

The ITEP program is set to power the Army’s future scout helicopter, but fell off schedule due to complications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn has delayed flight testing for the Lockheed Martin-Sikorsky and Bell competitive prototypes. The General Electric-made engine recently delivered its first engine to testing.

“We are targeting November of this year for delivery of the first engines to the two FARA competitors. We are on track for that,” Brig. Gen. Robert Barrie, the program executive officer for aviation, told reporters during a media roundtable on Monday at the Army Aviation Association of America conference in Nashville, Tenn.

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The ITEP engine was scheduled to begin testing in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, but that was ultimately delayed to last month. Army officials cited the combination of the pandemic and the aggressive schedule the service set in asking the program to speed up its timeline by a year.

Barrie called the recent ITEP testing milestone “significant” but added that there are “still many to go.” Barrie said that the engine had completed about seven hours of testing so far, including “some portion” of that time at full power.

“The reason I say that significant is although we have been delayed these days, with the digital design and the way you can bring the systems together, the fact that you can put an engine together and run it — it’s more significant than it would have been in the past, where it’s really a test, fix, test throughout the design process,” Barrie said.

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Both Bell and Sikorsky said they’re nearing completion for their prototypes, at 80% and 85% respectively. The two vendors are in a holding pattern as they wait for receive the ITEP engine to integrate into their prototypes, but both also plan to fly their prototypes in 2023. Barrie said those plans were realistic.

“There is a pathway for them to fly in ’23,” Barrie said. “There’s a risk associated with that, but it’s all hands on deck to manage and mitigate those risks.”

The one-star also noted that the Army had 3D-printed a model ITEP engine and sent it to the vendors so that “they were able to model what it would look like when they received the engine,” Barrie said. In the meantime, both Bell and Sikorsky plan to do risk reduction for their competitive prototypes and potential Increment One rotorcraft if they win the contract.

General Electric won a $517 million contract in February 2019 to build the ITEP program. According to GE, the engine has 3,000-drive horsepower and improves fuel consumption by 25%. The engine is also slated to be integrated onto Black Hawk and Apache helicopters.

“The team has fought through a tremendous amount of adversity for arguably what is one of our most important technologies that is going into FARA which is this transformational engine,” said Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, director of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team, at the roundtable.