AFA WARFARE SYMPOSIUM — The Air Force has awarded contracts to a mix of engine makers to field more options for powering the service’s forthcoming drone wingmen and other autonomous platforms.
The awards — issued to Beehive Industries, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney and a team-up of GE Aerospace and Kratos — will “mature engine designs in support of conceptual designs for Combat Collaborative Aircraft (CCA) Increment 2 and other types of Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACP),” an Air Force spokesperson said in a statement.
“This multi-vendor approach ensures the Air Force has a variety of options to power the diverse and evolving fleet of ACP and CCA Increments,” the spokesperson said.
For the first round, or increment, of the Air Force’s drone wingmen CCA program, the service opted for engines readily available off the shelf. But as one Air Force official previously explained, the service is also spending money to create new engine options in lower thrust ranges to unlock more options for future drones.
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“We saw that there was an area [in smaller engines] we needed to make investment together. So that’s where we’re making that investment,” Col. Timothy Helfrich, the director of the Air Force’s Agile Development Office, told reporters in September when asked about a request for proposal for lower-thrust engine solutions.
“To meet program schedule requirements, the CCA Increment 1 program solves operational problems by incorporating available, low risk propulsion solutions. The Air Force is maturing propulsion designs in different power classes in support of future ACP and CCA Increments that optimize cost, range, and mass,” the Air Force spokesperson said Tuesday about the awards to the four companies.
GE Aerospace said in a press release that the company’s contract with Kratos is valued at $12.4 million, and will “complete the preliminary design” of the team’s GEK1500 engine, which offers 1,500 pounds of thrust. Honeywell said in a release that its award will build off the firm’s Skyshot 1600 engine that offers up to 2,800 pounds of thrust, but did not reveal the dollar figure. Representatives for Beehive and Pratt did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Air Force spokesperson said the awards are for “early stages” of engine development, covering initial design with an option to complete what’s known as preliminary design review. “This design phase is crucial to evaluate what is in the ‘art of the possible’ before committing to the more expensive and complex phases of building and testing prototypes. The ultimate goal is to develop engines that are affordable, high-performing, and can be produced rapidly and at a large scale,” the spokesperson said.
Breaking Defense previously reported the Air Force awarded nine companies contracts for early design work for the air vehicle of the CCA program’s second increment, encompassing a broad range of concepts from attritable to exquisite designs. It’s not clear what route the Air Force may choose for the second CCA round, though the service plans to winnow down the pool of nine vendors for eventual production deals.