Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP)

Scott Kenny said:
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Missed this earlier:
Or a modified fatboi SH-60K?
Unlikely. The DDG hangars are built around holding two folded H60s, so the "SH-60R+S" can't really be any wider than a stock H60. The King Stallion has a wider fuselage with narrower sponsons so the overall width is the same as the older H53Es. But the H60 doesn't really have any sponsons or anything sticking out the sides to trade width to make the cabin wider.
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I'm afraid that you are laboring under a misunderapprehension. The Mitsubishi SH-60K is not wider. It has a lengthened (30 cm) and deeper (15 cm) fuselage cabin leading to an oddly shaped nose and revised under aft fuselage profile.

1747099294994.jpeg XSH-60L derived from SH-60K (SH-60Kai). Wikipedia
 
aim9xray said:
I'm afraid that you are laboring under a misunderapprehension. The Mitsubishi SH-60K is not wider. It has a lengthened (30 cm) and deeper (15 cm) fuselage cabin leading to an oddly shaped nose and revised under aft fuselage profile.

View attachment 769819 XSH-60L derived from SH-60K (SH-60Kai). Wikipedia
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Okay, I had somehow missed the Mitsubishi SH-60K's existence. warui na.

I had thought we were talking about a hypothetical "King Stallion"/"King Seahawk" type enlargement that stayed in the overall same footprint, and there's just nothing there to trade against.

That's not too far from my idea, I was assuming an even bigger cabin stretch under the engine+transmission doghouse. Honestly, a shortened H92 is about what I had in mind. Trim 50-75cm out of the tail of an H92 and put H60 rotors on it, see if Navy insists on taildragger or is okay with tricycle gear, and ditch the bulk of the sponsons. Add a 5-bladed hub if we need the extra blade for the power.
 
The Fat Lady may have not yet begun to sing for the program:
allendoc said:

House Armed Services Committee Approves NDAA Proposal | Aviation Week Network

HASC passed its fiscal 2026 defense policy bill, looking to block some key moves in the DOD proposal and raising the fleet size of USAF mobility aircraft.
aviationweek.com aviationweek.com
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The measure also takes a critical look at the Army’s proposed Transformation Initiative—a push that includes steps to cancel the Improved Turbine Engine Program, cut AH-64D Apaches and slash the MQ-1C, among others. Lawmakers in the markup hearing said the service has not provided any analysis backing up its plans.
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From that article, the critical phrase is: "Lawmakers in the markup hearing said the service has not provided any analysis backing up its plans." With many of these decisions there is no analysis. The U.S. Army has always been disinclined to argue with the decisions of civilian leadership. Rest assured that if the HASC or SASC ask for analysis, something will get done in six months or less to demonstrate the correctness of the position.
 
I understand the Army’s commitment to MV-75 and I know the Army faces a serious budget crunch, but T901 seems like a need to have, albeit maybe not an obvious one.

Am I being naive about the residual development work for this engine, it’s manufacturability, its timelines, are the likely performance and efficiency gains small?
 
Training_Dummy said:
I understand the Army’s commitment to MV-75 and I know the Army faces a serious budget crunch, but T901 seems like a need to have, albeit maybe not an obvious one.
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The trick is that with the Army moving to MV75, they don't have much desire to improve Blackhawks. The people who really need the better Blackhawks are SOCOM and USN.



Training_Dummy said:
Am I being naive about the residual development work for this engine, it’s manufacturability, its timelines, are the likely performance and efficiency gains small?
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Apparently the currently delivered "more power" and "better fuel economy" are not anywhere near the promises.
 
The tale of T800 repeat! I just don't see that the engine is so fantastically better than the T-700/701 to warrant a complete refit of the Army fleet. Still political factors might save the engine from obscurity.
 
yasotay said:
The tale of T800 repeat! I just don't see that the engine is so fantastically better than the T-700/701 to warrant a complete refit of the Army fleet. Still political factors might save the engine from obscurity.
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SOAR and USN need it.
 
The ITEP program 50% additional power was meant to provide significant improvement in high altitude, hot day hovers performance, like in the mountains of Afghanistan where existing Blackhawks were extremely payload and range limited. They were not increasing the main gearbox or rotor power capacity at sea level, but wanted to have that power available at 10k+ density altitude
 
F119Doctor said:
The ITEP program 50% additional power was meant to provide significant improvement in high altitude, hot day hovers performance, like in the mountains of Afghanistan where existing Blackhawks were extremely payload and range limited. They were not increasing the main gearbox or rotor power capacity at sea level, but wanted to have that power available at 10k+ density altitude
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Ah. I don't know that I had ever caught that detail. Guess that takes the USN out of wanting to buy any, the USN needs that power at sea level.

But holy crap, imagine an engine flat-rated to ~2200hp clear to ~15kft on a normal day! :mind blown emoji:
 

Army pushes industry to share costs as GE seeks more funding for ITEP testing​

breakingdefense.com

Army pushes industry to share costs as GE seeks more funding for ITEP testing - Breaking Defense

“We don't want to do all the development, we want to do the procurement. We want to buy it for the long term, so that that's where we're going back to the manufacturers and having negotiations about, how do we best position the development so that it's not all on the government," Maj. Gen. Clair...
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
 
Forest Green said:

Army pushes industry to share costs as GE seeks more funding for ITEP testing​

breakingdefense.com

Army pushes industry to share costs as GE seeks more funding for ITEP testing - Breaking Defense

“We don't want to do all the development, we want to do the procurement. We want to buy it for the long term, so that that's where we're going back to the manufacturers and having negotiations about, how do we best position the development so that it's not all on the government," Maj. Gen. Clair...
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
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The problem is that the entity that pays for the development of the engine owns the intellectual data. If the Army pays, they own the data. If GE pays, they own the data, but the Army will still want it for maintenance, repair, and possible 2nd source manufacturing.

Most military programs end up with a mix of data ownership. When the Navy went to P&W as a 2nd manufacturer of the F404, they owned all the data except for something GE proprietary for the 7th compressor blade. P&W had to reverse engineer the design and manufacture of that blade. Turned out that the GE blade had a failure mode that the P&W blade avoided.
 

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