Jane Edwards
The Defense Contract Management Agency, on behalf of the U.S. Army, accepted the first GE Aerospace-built flight test engine for the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft on Sept. 28, DVIDS reported Wednesday.
The second T901 engine is going through the acceptance process under the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program and the service is set to hand over the two engines to two vendors working on two FARA competitive prototypes – Raider X from Lockheed Martin‘s Sikorsky business and 360 Invictus from Textron‘s Bell subsidiary – by the end of October.
The General Electric subsidiary started assessing the first two T901 test engines during the spring and summer, subjecting the engines to a series of performance, safety and functional tests.
The T901 engine comes with an onboard Engine Health Management System, predictive logistics capability and increased power to support the Army’s multidomain operations.
In addition to powering FARA, the T901 engine will replace the T700 engine on UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters.
