2024 Air, Space & Cyber: 21st Century Jet Propulsion Imperative

The “21st Century Jet Propulsion Imperative” panel at the 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Dr. Michael R. Gregg, director of the Aerospace Systems Directorate at the Air Force Research Laboratory; Chris Flynn, vice president of military development programs at Pratt & Whitney; and David Tweedie, vice president and general manager for advanced products at GE Edison Works. The panel, held September 18, was moderated by Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.), director of research at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Watch the video below:

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.), Director of Research AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies:

Good afternoon to all. I’m Larry Stutzerim, and I’m the director of research at the Mitchell Institute. And welcome to you all.

Our topic today, next generation jet propulsion is a pivotal discussion. It’s a pivotal element of the Future Force the United States leads the world in the design and production of jet engines. And this skill, listen, is an asymmetric advantage of our nation.

It’s a talent, it’s a skill, it’s business acumen, and together, it’s that asymmetric advantage. It propelled us through the Cold War and beyond, and helped us outpace the Soviet Union and beyond. However, today, peer adversaries are rapidly closing the gap. Our allies and partners too are pushing to take lead in this crucial advantage over the past several decades, America’s commercial industry has made great leaps in jet engine technology, greatly increasing the efficiency of jet engines thanks to ongoing budget pressures and a host of other factors, the Air Force’s progress has slowed given the potential pause or possible delay in the Air Force next generation jet propulsion programs, programs that need advanced propulsion, like ngad, things hang in the balance. The nation can’t lose this asymmetric advantage. And so this panel was put together for you, for Congress, for the American public and especially the Air Force. So let me introduce because we’ve got three fantastic panelists who understand this topic better than anybody. First of all, Dr Michael Gregg, Executive Service. He’s the director at Aerospace Systems Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory. Next, we have Chris Flynn, Vice President military development programs, Pratt and Whitney. And we also have David Tweedie, Edison, works vice president and general manager for advanced products at GE aerospace, please give them a round of applause.

So let’s just jump right into questions, and I’ll ask this right down the line here for all three of you, American combat aircraft are powered by some of the world’s, if not the best world’s jet, world’s jet engines, and but some of them are based on some older designs. And with that in mind, I’d like you to talk about why it’s so important the United States aggressively pursue next generation designs, especially in this era great power competition and end gap next generation adaptive propulsion stands is just one example, and I’ll start with you. Dr. Gregg.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg, Director, Aerospace System Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory:

So we have the best engines, not someone. Thank you. The best. Be clear on that.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Touche.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg, Director:

And we’ve enjoyed that level of expertise. Performance, exquisite performance since the days of Charles Taylor and the Wright brothers. It goes back that far, but it doesn’t happen by accident. There’s not any overnight flashes of brilliance that result in us being preeminent in our ability to produce propulsion. It’s really hard, and it’s infrastructure intensive. It’s manpower, brain power intensive. It takes sustained, persistent investment over a long time to really push out the kinds of propulsion systems that we enjoy, and unfortunately, right now, with the pace of aircraft getting longer and taking longer to field, and we have fewer in production, and we have fewer opportunities to bring in new systems, new engineering that really puts a strain on industry, and it puts a strain on how we the government, make investments in this space, in the world so but there’s hope we have. We have good things that are coming. I mean, certainly the new digital tools help us, are going to help us a lot. The new theories about design will help us new new ideas about manufacturing technologies, new materials. There’s good news on the horizon, but it’s important that we continue to make a sustained investment. Yeah. Very good.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Chris?

Chris Flynn, Vice President, Miliatary Development Programs, Pratt & Whitney:

Thanks. Dr Gregg, and first of all, let me say thanks to all of the airmen out there that are serving every day. Also like to say thanks to the lawmakers that support the propulsion enterprise. Eyes and last but not least, got to say thanks to all the propulsion professionals that do really hard stuff every day. So I’ll let you in on a secret too.

There’s a birthday today. Whose birthday is it today? Air Force’s birthday today, right next year, Pratt and Whitney will celebrate its 100th birthday of providing power, and we started providing power with the Department of Defense. So come up to, let’s say, fourth generation, and really, we’ve come in full circle with this great power competition when the air force needed a air superior air superiority fighter, they called on Pratt and Whitney to help bring the f1 100 to the fight. 50 years later, the f1 100 is still powering F fifteens and F sixteens in 23 nations. Fast forward to fifth generation. Needed new capability. We brought the f1 19 with super cruise thrust vectoring, a computer system that communicated with the air system, and brought what is arguably the best fighter in the world, out there, and now with the F 35 same thing that doesn’t happen with out years and years of steady funding research to provide that capability when we need it. So my message really is, as we transform digitally, as we transform and get the propulsion enterprise to move faster by taking a little bit more risk, we got to continue to invest. It does not come without investing in the research and development required to bring sixth generation. So final thought on end gap, the Air Force was brilliant when they brought the adaptive engine transition program to demonstrate multiple technologies. We’ve done that. We have those technologies. We’re feeding them into the f1 35 engine core upgrade. We’re feeding them into the ngap program and others. That’s the circle of life in propulsion. That’s what we need to do. We need to continue to do that to be the best propulsion provider in the world.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, very good. Chris, David, how about you?

David Tweedie, Vice President and General Manager for Advanced Products, GE Edison Works:

Yeah, just circling back to the points you made, Stutz on the fight that everybody in this room is preparing for is going to be an away game, right? And so our adversary is going to have most likely strength in numbers, and they’ll have the benefit of proximity, right? What they don’t have today is an advantage in capability and propulsion capability, but they are working hard to close the gaps and where we are at today as a country.

As you said, it’s a complex thing. Someone once pointed out that there are more countries in the world that can produce nuclear weapons and can produce high performance, high reliability jet engines. And it’s an ecosystem, right? It’s an ecosystem of engineering talent, of manufacturing talent, both within our four walls and within our multi tiered supply chain. So it does require that investment. So if we want the people in this room to have that capability in years to come, we’ve got to make that steady investment. I certainly, certainly echo that, and gap represents that next stage of propulsion evolution you know, built on the foundations of ATP, hundreds of hours of great testing with our XA 100 engine. So we continue to advocate for end gap as that as that next step?

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, very good. Well, let me ask Dr. Gregg a question, and and then we’ll get into, we’ll peel back the onion a little bit on on some pieces with respect to engines, but you are the, you know, in charge of this enterprise within the Air Force. Tell us what the Air Force is doing, how it works to maintain its this advantage. I’m sure it’s a fast moving machine, but it’s all about the requirements and getting it done right.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg:

As in everything in our business, it’s a team sport, and so we as AFRL Research Lab, work very closely with John Sneden and his folks as the PEO for propulsion systems. Have great relationships with GE and Pratt enrolls and Williams and all the engine providers, and that’s what you have to do. You have to maintain those relationships to make sure that we’re all communicating, because when you are in an era of scarce resources, you can’t afford to guess wrong. And so it’s a constant. What are you doing? What do you need? How do we help you? How do we Help each other. What do you see that’s new? How do we think ahead? It’s that constant process of what’s next. Said, innovation doesn’t happen overnight. It takes sustained activity. And so with all, with most of the major providers, we have ongoing projects, and that’s just what it takes to just sustained effort.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, if, if I could just follow that up with, you know, if there isn’t a sustained effort, adequate resources, industry is not going to keep that talent in that pool. And that’s that’s that could just drop the floor out from underneath our ability to research. Perspective, that’s about where we’re at right now. The ATP engine was the last big, major research and development activity, but that’s now almost 20 years old. Some of that and the demand signal for research, at least on the military side, has really shrunk.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg:

And so from a research perspective, we’re getting much more demand for the smaller engines, or the less exquisite, but maybe cheaper. Or we’re looking at missile engines as opposed to jet engines. We’re looking at hypersonic propulsion. So it’s instead of a focus on that high end, most exquisite, most technologically challenging, our research has really become much more diffuse.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, very good. So let me stick with the high end for just a second and ask Chris and David a question. You know, we hear it a lot now that you’re very sophisticated jet engines are no longer about thrust. The stuff that comes out the back end pushes me forward in my fighter, but, but it’s more important now that it provides power and cooling for very, you know, sophisticated avionics in the information age. So I just ask you both, and I’ll start with David, what does this mean to you as an industry, as far as new designs and this work to evolve these aircraft to be even bigger Information Systems consuming more power and cooling.

David Tweedie:

Yeah? You know, designing thrust producing machines was pretty tough, and so now, to add that degree of difficulty, of Yeah, can you also generate exponentially more power and and, you know, with all that those systems, they generate heat. Could you? Could you help do something with that heat, too? So we embrace that challenge. And there’s kind of three ways that I think about that we can, we can attack that problem when we’re designing new engines from scratch. First, goes at the architecture level, right and adaptive engines provide a lot more levers for us to do some segregation between the thrust producing parts of the engine and the thermal and power sides of the engine. So you can get the best of both worlds. So you have to plumb that in right from the beginning. From an architecture perspective, I think component technologies, particularly you think about thermal management, heat exchangers are critical to that. You know, lightweight and formal, complex geometry really lends itself to additive technology as a way to unlock the design engineers toolkit to be able to produce those. So that’s that’s very important. And then I think the third thing is, you know, the propulsion and power is part of a weapon system, a system, right? And there’s going to be multiple companies with different pieces of that system. And if we all design in silos, and we all design towards the peak, you know, loads, we have to set operability limits very conservatively. And I think when you stack all that up, you’re sub optimizing at a system level. So with the digital tools, physics based that, I think exists now that didn’t in prior generations, if we can learn to talk better as as companies in the industry when we’re together on a platform in link those, I think there’s, there’s some hidden opportunities there as well. When, when we’re optimizing at the system, not as the pieces of the system, we have to think differently across the board. Yeah, how do we attack the problem?

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Chris thoughts, yeah.

Chris Flynn:

Generally agree with Dave’s comments on that, if you go back in time and you go back to fourth gen, not really an important part of a fourth gen system. It was, but not to the extent it is today. Fast forward to fifth Gen, and all of a sudden the weapon system wants to hide everything. So there’s no more scoops, there’s no more pods. There’s no more anything hanging on. Where does all that got to come it’s got to come from somewhere. Comes from the engine. So over the decades, there’s been doubling and quadrupling of requirements for power and cooling from for the engine. Fast forward to sixth Gen, and think about AI, and think about the capability that this is going to bring to the weapon systems,I could see exponential increases in the requirements. And today’s point, it’s all about how we digitally design the system architecture. Bring these new cooling capacities and improvements that we’re working on today, our sister division at Collins has demonstrated the ability to bring significant capability in power and cooling to the F 35 so that’s just going to keep going, and we need to keep advancing the capabilities to stay ahead of it.

I’d like to go back to Dr Gregg’s point for just a second. He talked about the focus on smaller engines. I would submit to you that we need to be focusing on big engines too, because seventh generation is coming, and if we as a community don’t recognize that we need to start now to invest in the capabilities you’re going to take us to the next, next level.

David Tweedie:

Yeah, if you don’t mind, let me just pile on just one more the you know, there’s some short term uncertainty around ngad today and exactly where that’s heading. Yes, and I’d love to know where that answer is. What I do feel pretty confident, is over the if you look broad your horizon over the long term, you know if the Air Force is going to continue to have air dominance as a core mission, and you’re going to have to need to put some sort of tactical platforms into a stand in capability, crude or uncrewed, with significant range, payload and survivability, you’re going to need the next generation of exquisite propulsion in order to make that work. So whether it’s short term or long term just there’s going to be a need for this capability, and we need to be ready, collectively as an industry, for that.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, by the way, for the audience, we have Mitchell Institute as a podcast coming out to talk talking about engines. Very interesting topic. We go into some detail on that, but I will say, I’ll bring up one thing I talked about on that podcast. And you know, I started my career in the Air Force in the f4 I don’t think we could get an F 35 started with the volt amperes that were in the f4 little two little, tiny generators. So I turn to Dr. Gregg and say, you know, what I’ve been impressed with across my Air Force career and beyond is the number of technologies that come together, as David was saying, to produce new engine technology, materials, miniaturization of electronics, new manufacturing techniques and so forth. I’m wondering how you are tackling at the lab this issue of power and cooling. And then we’ll talk a little later about the small engines again.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg:

Sure. So I’m going to piggyback on what David said just a few minutes ago, and he brought up the multidisciplinary design work. And let me give you an idea of the future. State is we are flipping the script on aerospace. You know, for the last 100 years it was designed the airframe first define the space you stick an engine in, and then you figure out what space you have left to put mission systems around. Well, what we’re doing now is we’re we have the tools in place where we can start thinking, what mission do we want to perform, what mission systems do we need to perform that mission? Then what kind of power and thermal management systems environmental conditions do we need to achieve to enable those mission systems? Then how do we generate the power to do that? The airframe is actually last, and what we do, where the future is taking us, is you design simultaneously, all those pieces together so that you don’t sub optimize along any individual in part and power and thermal is there’s just an insatiable appetite for more and more, even more so than the upper end performance coming out of thrust that’ll always be there. But power and thermal and how do we manage these very exquisite and and power hungry systems? Is we’re making a large investment on how we we manage that, and so that’s the future state. That’s where we’re going. It’s how do we do that simultaneously, parallel development, not just of the engine, but of that whole flow path, that whole system string.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.)

Yeah, Chris,

Chris Flynn:

I can just jump in here real quick and we talk about that system. Thanks to the ngap program, the propulsion enterprise is transforming from a digital standpoint. And while we’re advancing the technologies for the next generation, we’re also advancing our processes. And it is stunning to me to see the advancements that we’ve made and just in the last few years on this digital transformation, and it’s going to directly support what Dr Gregg said in terms of being able to model these systems from end to end quickly, identify what works and what doesn’t work, model it again, and do this in a digital. Environment until you find the right solution. So it’s amazing the capability these digital systems have today, and we’re taking advantage of that as we move forward in developing the next generation. Yeah, very good.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.)

So let me for you, David, I’m really curious, because your company is doing some exciting things. Can you talk to us a little bit? I kind of alluded to the evolution in materials, what this means to future propulsion solutions. And what we know is GE has pioneered some breakthrough technologies that increase efficiency, but also decreasing weight, and that’s important for the overall design. And these are ceramic matrix composites. Few words on that.

David Tweedie:

Yeah. so, you know, we make generational leaps in propulsion technology. And you know, historically, we’ve used nickel based super allies in our hot sections, our combustors and our turbines to take higher and higher temperatures, which is how you get more and squeeze more performance out of an engine. And you kind of can continue to iterate on the chemistry, try to get a little bit more temperature capability, but we’re starting to run out of room. That really is starting to plateau. So we pivoted towards a ceramic based material system a number of years ago, and instead of 1020, 30 degrees more capability, it’s got three to 500 degrees more temperature capability. So you run the engines hotter, that’s how you get the performance at but even at those elevated temperatures, with CMCS, you get as good or better as today’s durability. So it’s a step change in technology that kind of breaks that classic performance versus durability trade that we all have to deal with. And as you pointed out, it’s a third the weight, right? It’s an aerospace product lighter weight tends to be better so, and it’s a great example where there’s synergy between our commercial business and our military business. We pioneered the technology and demonstrated it in some early military programs with AFRL, with with the LCMC team, and then, as we kind of proved that it would work, our commercial business trying to serve our airline customer needs for relentless push for better fuel efficiency. We started to bet on the technology in our narrow body products, and so we took the bet, but then we made a commitment to industrialize it. It’s one thing to make a few copies and put it in a demonstrator engine on the ground. It’s another thing to figure out how to make 2000 engines that’s a year at cost, at quality, to get it qualified through an air worthy for airworthiness through a regulatory agency. And so our commercial business has grabbed a hold of it, put it into production. It’s on our narrow body products, and the Boeing and Airbus fleets hundreds of millions of flight hours, taking it to the next level on our wide body engines. And then we roll that back into our adaptive engines, like the XA-100 where it was incredibly successful, and we went to that next piece in the of complexity. It’s foundational to our XA-102, engine on end gap. So we really view it as the future for hot section design initiated in military, industrialized and commercial. We’re going to roll it back into the military and in the same factory, so the DoD gets the benefit of being a fast follower of our commercial business.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, very, very exciting technology in terms of material support and, of course, the producibility issue with respect to that, I know you’ll get to there. So Chris, you guys are at the forefront of innovation, by the way. I just want to say I’ve flown both your engines in the 16. Thank you. I came back every time. I appreciate that. But you’ve been at the forefront, and you’re right now the only fifth generation aircraft engine provider. So how this experience? Long experience with these fifth generation aircraft and their engines? How’s that going into your sixth generation thinking and engineering.

Chris Flynn:

Yeah, good question. Larry the I had the opportunity to run both the F1-19 and the F1-35 programs over my career, and they’re just amazing engines that you know, focus on delivering the capability of these fifth gen platforms. We’ve got nearly 2 million flight hours in fifth generation systems, and we started learning on day one. And just like we do across all of the other platforms, we have a very rigorous process of learning what happens out in the field and being able to bring it back in to our design systems, update our designs if identify solutions. There’s a couple of things I know about jet engines. One of them is that no matter what we do with specifying the way that we want it qualified to when it gets to the field, it’s going to be used differently. I don’t know what you guys, the pilots are up to, but we never can’t seem to get the design specification exactly the way you use the the systems, because you learn. You learn so all of that learning, and we’ve got a tried and true process that we developed over the years to bring that learning back into our systems. And. Component improvement program for engines is absolutely critical in making sure that we can take those learnings, introduce new capability, and get them out into the field to address anything that we might be learning. So that process is tried and true, and with the digital transformation that’s coming, we’re able to bring the information from the sustainment enterprise back into the design enterprise at a much faster pace with these digital tools. So very exciting times right now.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.)

And I’ll tell you, what I appreciate both companies is and AFRL is that you engage the warfighter throughout that time period, you know, to really understand that better. And AFRL is building a pretty good reputation now for increasing the contact with the warfighter to be able to get the requirements right at the front end, understand them better. So we finally, I want to, I want to come off the exquisite for a second and talk about collaborative combat Air aircraft, which we’ve heard a lot about during the conference in the first couple days and we’ve done at Mitchell now, our third war game exploring the use of a collaborative combat aircraft. Now, it’s not low technology, it’s a smaller engine that designed for a specific mission. So I’d like you all to kind of address where we’re at with CCA, and is there innovation we’re going to find in small engine program? And I’ll start with you. Dr. Gregg, absolutely.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg:

There’s a huge innovation space on how we approach CCA, and it’s more than just a collaborative combat aircraft. It’s this whole family of systems. And going back to Mission, you can envision an autonomous ISR platform or an autonomous ew platform. Each of those is going to have different performance requirements, whether it’s speed, altitude, range, power requirements, and it would be nice if we could build an ecosystem where we can tailor more of that entire flow path system, instead of having to build around one engine or around one airframe. We haven’t quite cracked the code on how we get industry to be successful in that environment, but we’re thinking hard about that. I think what drives CCA is ultimately going to be the price point. We want to think about maybe 1000 to 5000 hours on an engine. And if you think along those lines from the beginning, does that change your materials that you use. Does it change your maintenance concept, your sustainment concept? Does that change you how you run it? So there’s a lots of things that we need to experiment and learn and test and figure that out, but from my point of view, CCA is just like, really opens the aperture, and what’s really going to be hard is making sure that we have that sustained work with industry to figure out how we get what we need, how they can continue to be successful.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.)

Yeah, very good. David, how about you?

David Tweedie:

Yeah, you know, when we talk to our customers and what’s most important in the CCA front, we hear three things, I think, affordability, affordability and affordability. And just in case we didn’t get the point, I think the Air Force has labeled the whole concept affordable mass, right? So we don’t lose sight of that is, you know, and as well as the things you talked about, a very small sustainment infrastructure compatibility with Agile combat employment. So we do have to think very differently. There’s an whole ecosystem of how we design products, how we manufacture products, the quality systems, the qualification, it’s very appropriate, whether we’re flying 350 people across the Pacific Ocean on a twin engine commercial airliner, or we put a single pilot in harm’s way on a single engine fighter, and that ecosystem that we’ve had for decades is very appropriate and optimizes for those problems. This is a very different problem. So from the very beginning, you got to think differently about an architecture that gives you low cost, a set of technologies on the manufacturing side that aim at low cost. So you can, you can get to that affordable mass. We think within GE we didn’t necessarily have all that. We have a great culture in one area we needed to fundamentally change. So we announced over the summer, we’re in partnership with Kratos turbine technologies, who has a great skill set when it comes to agile, low cost. So we think this, you know, the sum is greater than or the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. GE in partnership with Kratos is we’ve got a Gek 800 engine on test. So we, as you said, we see a family of systems, right. There is no point design where a single vendor is going to have a single a single solution that meets everybody’s needs, but we’re taking the steps in partnership with Kratos to have affordable solutions in this space, because we know that’s what the warfighter needs.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Chris?

Chris Flynn:

Interesting. The other thing that they want, in addition to affordability, Dave, is speed. Got to go fast, right? And so this first increment is, you know, all about speed, and from our perspective, it’s, how do you get iron on the ramp? Maybe it’s not iron anymore, but how do you get it as soon as possible, right? And that’s where commercial off the shelf comes. We have a stable of engines at Pratt and Whitney that can provide various levels of thrust that can be pulled off of a production line today and inserted into collaborative combat aircraft. So that’s going to take care of the speed element. If you guys saw a week or so ago, Northrup and scale flew a 437 with a PW 535 those are the type of things that you can pull right off of the production line and insert into the collaborative combat aircraft environment. The thing that I think is most important today that we as a community need to deal with from an innovation standpoint in CCAs is airworthiness, and you hit on it, Dave, it’s like we have these tremendous systems that fly people and pilots and and people all over the world, a very demanding requirement to certify them for to be airworthy. We don’t need that for CCAs. So how do we get the community to come together? We’ve had at least three conversations in the last 24 hours about changing the the look at how we go and certify CCA engines for airworthiness. The final thing I say is, I’ll go back to my fourth, fifth and sixth Gen. My prediction, just my prediction, is that the Air Force is going to want more out of CCAs, not less, right? More, not less. That’s going to bring more power and thermal if you think about these artificial intelligence systems, they’re going to be sucking all kinds of power they need cooling. I think the engines are going to explain and that’s where I think we’re going to get some innovation when it comes to the CCA is, how do we provide them the capability with either survivable systems or systems that have more power in thermal I think that’s where the game is going forward.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg:

If I could jump in on that, I agree there’s always going to be an insatiable appetite for more. The question is, how does the government get industry to how do we pay for innovation instead of paying for sustainment? More is great if you can deliver at pace, at scale. I have to be willing to say this is good for what I can produce and put in an aircraft today, but I don’t want to keep that for 10 years, because I want the pace of innovation to go so rapidly that I know what’s coming next, and I can produce that and through digital design, we can achieve a certification process this much faster. I don’t know if Lily are coos is in the audience, but pinned that on her.

Chris Flynn:

We had a good conversation with Lily yesterday.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg:

So that’s where I would like to see. How do we how do we work with industry to flip that to say, Yeah, PACE is great, but we want to pay to innovate, not to keep something around forever.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, yeah. Understand. Well, this brings us into another area, and that is, you’re doing this fantastic work, and there’s this thing called the Valley of Death, how do we actually move it from all this great innovation that’s being done, demonstrations that are being done, of course, all the R and D money that’s being spent doing good work with basic technologies and trls that build so from each of your perspectives, you know, we’ve got industry and government here, very, very important. I’ll moderate as the warfighter, even though I’m old and used up, but talk to us about how it’s very important to bridge this gap, and where are we going to speed that up, as you talked about, Chris, the speed piece of it, I’ll start with with you, Dr Gregg.

Dr. Michael R. Gregg:

So I think there’s a perfect case study that’s out on the floor down in the exhibition center. There is you see those three CCA aircraft models. And that happened because we the lab embedded with our LCMC customers, both from the program office WA and with LP, and we very deliberately connected to the warfighters, and we built that ecosystem to solve problems every day at speed, so to cross the valley of death. That is going to be our operating model. And I think the Integrated Development Office is going to help create that environment where you have four fighters, you have acquires, you have the technologist all in one place at one time, solving problems together. Awesome. And that is going to get us over that valley.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.)

Yeah, fantastic. It’s such a it’s always been there, but there’s just such a renew. Interest in bringing those that Venn diagram together, very important, Chris?

Chris Flynn:

I’ll open up the aperture a little bit and look at the operational imperatives. When Secretary Kendall launched those a few years ago, he cast a very wide net across all of industry, including propulsion. And for the last five years, we have done tremendous demonstrations with XA-101, the aetp engine that validate a ton of technologies that are going into like end gap and to ECU we’ve demonstrated with commercial off the shelf engines for CCAs, new capabilities. I like to tell my team, we can provide 50 pounds of thrust to 50,000 pounds of thrust, depending on what the operational imperative requires. So affordable mass. There’s technologies there that we need to bring you know forward to enable the cost, the price point that that the Air Force is looking for. So there’s just a whole bunch of areas where, over the last several years, we’ve demonstrated capabilities. We teamed with Dr. Gregg on rotating detonation engines, fascinating technology that we’re moving from academia to through through the TRL process, and it’s amazing what we’re learning as we go bring that capability to the forefront. We got to keep it going. That brings incredible capability to the warfighter. And you know, I think you’re right. I think the new offices will help identify what the priorities are and what we need to go and continue to take across the valley of death. One final comment about this propulsion should never be viewed as a commodity. We need to invest in it, and if it’s a 50 pounds of thrust or 50,000 pounds of thrust. We need to continue to keep the advantage that the United States of America has in propulsion. You’re here.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

David?

David Tweedie:

I’ll just echo the imperative of we have to get this across the valley of death. When we think about the industrial base, we think of, there’s three big legs on that stool, the ability of an engineering team to design innovative products, the ability of a supply chain to produce at an affordable cost, at an appropriate rate, and product support infrastructure to support that out in the field. And programs like aetd, aetp and gap are tremendous and necessary, and they preserve one of those three legs right the engineering talent to do the innovation. We’ve got to close this virtual circle where you put things into production, then you provide resiliency in the supply chain. You provide resiliency in the product support infrastructure. You give businesses a business case that they can that’s sustainable, that they can then plow those profits into the next generation of technology. Oh, and by the way, when you put things into production, capability is actually getting out of the hands of getting out of a test cell and into the hands of the warfighter, which is why we’re all here. So it’s just really important in a capitalist system, and it’s not about a couple big primes, you know that lean forward and invest and you know, our job in industry is to deliver the right solution at the right time, at an affordable price, and when we do that, we need partnership on the other side to help get it across the goal line. And when we don’t do that, it can ripple and you know, not just to the big primes, but to the key tier one suppliers, down into our suppliers, where they have to make investment decisions on resource allocation. Do I hire this work or do I buy this and build it. Buy this machine. Do I build this factory? So it’s just this virtuous circle when it’s working, and we want to do our part, in partnership with with the government, to figure out how to deliver the right things the right time at an affordable price, and then collectively get it into the hands of the warfighter at volume.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. We just got about a minute left, so, but I’d like to just get a few words from both companies about some things you’re doing. One is, David, you’re working hypersonic dual ramjet with the rotating detonation, combustion. What? Where’s that at? And what’s up with that?

David Tweedie:

Yeah, I’ll be quick, because I know we’re short on time. You know, we see a need for being able to reach targets at speed, time sensitive targets. So hypersonic propulsion, whether that’s single use or reusable hypersonics, we made a big investment bringing a company called intervarian into the fold. Great talent, great technology. We’ve got dual motor RAM jets on test right now, and we think we combine that with our high mock turbine capability, we can provide a lot of solutions in the hypersonic space, both single use and reusable. We’re excited about that exciting.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Exciting technology. And Chris F-35 program talk to us about how you you’re critical to that.

Chris Flynn:

Yeah. What a program. I call it. The many United Nations when I led that program. And it is very complicated, is very exciting, but you know, we have a footprint for the F1-35 all over the world to support the engines. And we’re up to probably 18 countries that are buying the F-35 because of its capability. And the F1-35 is delivering on the safest, most reliable engine, most powerful single engine fighter out there. The engine core upgrade is one of those circles of life that I talked about, and the engine core upgrade is underway right now. We just completed our PDR that’ll bring the next level of capability, including more power and thermal like we knew would happen, and really exciting time and just an exciting program to be a part of.

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