DAYTON, Ohio — After years of delays, the Air Force now expects a next-generation engine will be ready to be put on an aircraft by the end of the decade — though a top service official would not commit to which plane the powerplant might fly with.
Over the next few years, and coinciding with a cresting budget for the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program, the Air Force expects to build and test dueling prototypes from competitors GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney. That work, according to John Sneden, the chief of the Air Force’s propulsion directorate, will culminate in “get[ting] ready for potential integration activities in the 2030 timeframe.”
Speaking with reporters here at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference, Sneden subsequently declined to directly comment on what platform might receive an NGAP engine.
“The Air Force is still evaluating its options,” Sneden said, emphasizing that the underlying engine technology may “open up” different choices down the road. “What we’re doing right now is we’re building our system today, and we’re getting ready for the future.”
A new NGAP engine “could” go on the F-47, Sneden said, emphasizing that no decisions have been made. Still, he stressed that NGAP “is really a host of technologies” that can be integrated backwards into existing designs.
Air Force officials have previously said NGAP is designed to be platform agnostic, meaning the engine architecture could serve various propulsion needs, but the program was envisioned to provide a powerplant for the service’s Next Generation Air Dominance fighter now dubbed the F-47. Given that the secretive aircraft is slated to fly sometime during the current Trump administration, it’s unlikely the in-development stealth fighter would sport an NGAP engine in the near term. However, depending on the design of the aircraft, an update down the line would be entirely possible.
The multi-billion dollar NGAP program could herald a leap in military propulsion, Air Force officials have said, since underlying “adaptive” turbofan engine technologies can change the characteristics of a jet engine in flight to enable features like more fuel efficient cruising or increased thrust. The program has so far faced cumulative delays totaling roughly three years, Breaking Defense previously reported, which Sneden today attributed to pursuing competition with two vendors on a limited budget.
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The Air Force is requesting roughly $514 million for the NGAP effort in fiscal 2027, a number set to peak at nearly $906 million in FY28, according to budget documents.
“The last non-derivative fighter engine that we pressed forward was in the 1990s,” Sneden said. “If you want to stay ahead of our competitors, then you have to lean into this technology now.”
Separately, Sneden revealed a separate upgrade for the F-35’s engine, dubbed the Engine Core Upgrade, would be ready for flight testing “in the 2030 timeframe.” The ECU program, contracted to Pratt, is expected to clear a critical design review next month, he added. A previous Government Accountability Office report found the upgraded engine would not be in production until at least 2031.