The U.S. Army’s Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) is a tiltrotor aircraft that takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter and flies like an airplane. Several key components of FLRAA will be supplied by GE Aerospace, including the powerful network, called the Digital Backbone, that acts as the nerve center for all the data traffic on board.

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Aviation & Missile Center (CCDC AvMC), Boeing, and GE Aviation expanded the flight envelope in their demonstration of a Chinook helicopter with GE Aviation's T408 engine at Ft. Eustis, Va. The cooperative test team achieved first flight in September 2020, and continues to show how integration of more powerful engines on the CH-47 Chinook can support future aircraft capability and Army Aviation modernization efforts.

The T700, GE Aviation’s workhorse helicopter engine, has been going strong for 42 years and counting. This spring alone, the company was awarded $242 million in contracts with the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.

In the last month alone, GE Aviation has been awarded more than $476 million in contracts to produce military engines and hardware to support the U.S. military and international customers. 

2020 is off to a fast start and GE Aviation has already checked off one of its biggest milestones of the year with the first flight of the GE9X-powered Boeing 777X on January 25th. Here are the other big moments the business is anticipating.

GE Aviation is transitioning roughly 1,000 engineers to support Armed Forces programs.

The Boeing B-52 is a true timeless warrior, first entering service in 1955. It served as an icon of US air power beginning with the Cold War, and continues to support our warfighters today. The US Air Force plans to keep it in service until the year 2050 and the US Air Force has budgeted to move forward with a B-52 re-engining program in the Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Budget Proposal.

GE Aviation Digital Solutions, in partnership with GE’s Marine Solutions, recently secured an Asset Performance Management (APM) proof of concept order from Military Sealift Command (MSC). MSC is the leading provider of ocean transportation for the Navy and the Department of Defense, operating approximately 120 ships daily around the globe.

There are a number of collaborations and preparations carried out for helicopters that are assembled at Leonardo Elicotteri's facility in Tessera, Italy. “In fact, along with the whole team of Brindisi technicians, Avio Aero also works at the military bases of the customer end user, or at airports around the world,” explained Claudio Stefanelli, a lead technical services specialist at Avio Aero, a GE Aviation business.

GE Aviation successfully completed testing a T901-GE-900 turboshaft engine prototype in support of the United States Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP).