While Air Force leaders are still refining concepts for the next increment of Collaborative Combat Aircraft, competition to produce compact, low-cost engines for those aircraft is already heating up.
Rolls-Royce
The Rolls-Royce F130 engine, as it will serve on the B-52J, has passed Critical Design Review, the company announced. The CDR happened on time, but the overall program continues to lag original timetables.
By providing hands-on engineering experience with real planes, the program awards high school students with National Aerospace/Aircraft Assembly certifications, enabling them to find work as entry-level aircraft technicians right out of high school.
It’s no secret that Rolls-Royce North America has been a trusted partner for the U.S. Air Force going back decades – even before the service was established in 1947. From the company’s factories in Indianapolis, originally the Allison Engine plants,...
Within a brand-new, gleaming-white facility called the “high bay” at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex, a battered and rusty-looking fuselage and left wing of a B-52H has become a laboratory for the government-industry team that will revamp the aged Stratofortress fleet for the next ...
Rolls-Royce is in the last few months of testing its F130-200 engines before a critical design review of the powerplants, which will equip the re-engined and upgraded B-52J, a company official said. “We’re about one-third through” engine runs with F130-200 Nos. 1 and 2, F130 ...
Darryl Roberson knows a little bit about flying jets. After flying F-4s, F-15s, F-16s, and F-22s over a 34-year Air Force career—a rarity in a modern, specialized world—he’s now helping to bring a new age of modern engineering and manufacturing to today’s warfighters.
AFA’s National Teacher of the Year: Nancy Parra-Quinlan
The B-52H will be redesignated the B-52J or possibly B-52K when it gets a new radar and new engines, but the Air Force hasn’t yet decided what will constitute the new B-52 variant, according to Col. Louis Ruscetta, senior materiel leader for the program. The ...
The cost of the B-52 re-engining program has increased 50 percent because of integration issues, according to revelations in a House Armed Services panel hearing. The B-52 Commercial Engine Replacement Program has been conducted as a middle-tier acquisition program to get underway rapidly and develop ...
Forty years since the Air Force first started thinking about replacing the eight engines on the B-52, the job is finally underway. The re-engining is the centerpiece of an upgrade that will keep the Stratofortress operationally relevant for another 20 to 30 years. Two new F130 ...
Rolls-Royce North America CEO Tom Bell chalks up the company's win of the B-52 commercial re-engining program to a comprehensive digital model of the bomber's wing, demonstrating how its F130 engine would give the best performance.
