The U.S. Army has not yet terminated the Improved Turbine Engine Program despite the service proposing to end the program as part of its major transformation initiative laid out in May.
While the service continues to look at different courses of action with the program, it has continued its testing program. The Army had already installed the General Electric-designed engine, designed to replace all the engines in both UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters, into a Black Hawk at Sikorsky’s facility in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The aircraft first flew in May with the new engine and has since been tested in forward flight at up to 4,000 feet, Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army program executive officer for aviation told Defense News in a recent interview.
“The aircraft and the en