GE Aerospace Closes In On First FARA Engine Deliveries

LE BOURGET—GE Aerospace says the first T901 flight test engine for the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) contest is running in a test cell at its facility in Lynn, Massachusetts, and will be delivered along with a second engine to the two competitors—Bell and Sikorsky—in the next few months.

Bell’s tandem-cockpit, single-main-rotor 360 Invictus is competing for the FARA contest against Sikorsky’s Raider X, a compound-coaxial helicopter with a pusher propeller. Both are designed to be powered by a single T901, although the Bell 360 also incorporates a supplemental power unit based on the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW207D1 turboshaft.

Updating progress on the delayed program here at the Paris Air Show, Amy Gowder, president and chief executive officer of GE Aerospace Military Systems, says: “Both of our two flight test engines are already assembled and the first one is in its test cell going through its paces. So we still see delivery to the two airframers in the fall of this year. Both will get them at the same time.”

The 3,000 shp-rated GE T901 was chosen by the Army as the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) powerplant contest for FARA in February 2019. But development was initially slowed by a protest from the losing Honeywell-Pratt & Whitney team. Further delays were caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and knock-on supply chain impacts. Under the revised schedule, initial engine tests were due to begin in the third quarter of 2021 but finally got underway in March 2022, clearing the way for the recent start of tests of the first flight engines.

Gowder also cautions that GE “still has a lot of testing ahead of us and we still have 5,000 hours of testing to go on endurance testing and altitude testing. All those engines are in the process of being assembled as well."

The T901 is due to complete 1,500 hr. of ground testing before receiving a preliminary flight rating. Full qualification will be completed after an overall 5,000 hr. of planned engine run time.

The T901 has also been selected by the Army to re-engine its Apache and Black Hawk fleets. “We think in the first quarter next year we'll start to work with the Black Hawk program on the integration of the engine into that platform,” Gowder says.