Pratt & Whitney and Honeywell announced yesterday here at Le Bourget that they have agreed to work together to develop a new, 3,000-shp turboshaft engine for the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk and Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters under the Army’s Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine (AATE) technology demonstrator program. AATE could provide the winner with an eventual market for up to 5,000 engines, according to Pratt & Whitney military engines president Thomas Farmer.
The other AATE contender is GE Aviation, which supplies the T700 turboshaft currently powering Black Hawks and Apaches. In 2000, GE and P&W signed a deal to develop an engine for the same applications under the Common Engine Program, which P&W subsequently pulled out of. “The common core agreement with GE was for the existing [T700] engine program and did not allow Pratt & Whitney to leverage its advanced engine technologies for future application,” said Farmer.
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