Washington: The US Air Force now expects prototyping for highly advanced fighter jet engines will not be complete until 2031, delaying the marquee propulsion effort again by more than a year.
In a statement, an Air Force spokesperson said the new timeline for the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) programme “reflects expanded test and evaluation of NGAP prototypes and allows investigation of test findings.”
The 2031 completion date is disclosed in the service’s fiscal 2027 budget documents, and follows roughly two years of delays revealed last year. Collectively, NGAP is now facing a three-year delay compared to earlier projections.
Both GE Aerospace and RTX subsidiary Pratt & Whitney are competing under the NGAP programme, where the two firms are expected to fabricate full-up engine prototypes. Earlier this month, the two firms said they cleared a milestone known as assembly readiness review for their respective NGAP offerings dubbed the XA102 for GE and the XA103 for Pratt.
“GE Aerospace continues to execute the NGAP programme in close partnership with the Air Force and in alignment with their allocated funding and test timeline,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing this close partnership and developing this adaptive engine technology to deliver the capability to the warfighter.”
A spokesperson for Pratt’s parent firm RTX said that the company “remains fully committed to the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) programme and continues to make progress, executing the programme successfully with the funding provided by the government customer. We recently completed a fully digital assembly readiness review for our XA103 engine, marking a key milestone as we transition from digital design to producing physical hardware for testing.” The company referred further questions to the Air Force.
