General Electric $2.47 Billion Military Contract

It seems that the "Transport Engine" department of General Electric located in the Cincinnati suburb of Evendale has been granted a $2.47 billion contract by Lockheed Martin to produce the "next generation of aircraft engine" the local news was quoted as saying.. When I think of "transport engines" I'm thinking commercial and freight engines.. not military..

www.thenewstribune.com...

Now.. after talking about this with an elderly co-worker she told me that her deceased husband worked at GE for some 25 years and had a clearance of top secret and worked mostly in the facility's underground testing area's.. Where he worked with a female "chemist" who was and I quote "working on a way to turn a plane invisible or something.. I dont know". As I said.. she is elderly..

So who knows what's going on under our very noses.. I live less than 2 miles from this facility and pass it going to and from work. Makes me wonder what can be going on in there..

I apologise for the lack of links.. the more I research this the more links I will post..

Thanks for readin

Ack.. just noticed that I stuck this is the wrong forum. (Long day at work) If an admin would move this to the aircraft section that would be great.. thanks

[edit on 24-8-2005 by Ox]

TWO WORDS "John titor"

Im sorry.. I dont quite follow your reply? John titor? What's he got to do with anything? This is a legit story. As I originally posted it was played all over the local news and I live very close to the facility.. Could you clear up what you mean please?

John Titor said his "time machine" was a developed by G.E. for the military. So i guess he/she sees a connection there.

But the "time machine" of Titor's, was based on particles acceleration. Not engine mechanics. Plus, he said the studies would be undergone at Cern Laboratories and the "time machine" wouldn't come for quite some time.

Not that I agree or believe the Titor story. But just so...ya know.

Hey, thanks for clearing that up. I find that a little strange as well. Something tells me that GE wouldn't be in the market for time machines, they make a hell of a truck though.. all kidding aside, I've come to learn that GE has been working on for some time now "optical camouflage for aircraft, as I mentioned in my initial post an elderly co-worker's husband worked there until the day he died, and he took the secrets to his grave but did mention a new type of camouflage that made aircraft "damn near impossible to see".. now I don't know any little old ladies that lie so I'm going to take it at face value, she did say that her husband worked with a female chemist on this project.. So, not to catch too much hell for this post all I'm going to say is, I believe her, you can too if you want.

so when u say optical i assume we are talking about not visiable to the human eye? if its an ol lady to id really try to get a clear answer because we do have stealth which renders a plane "invisable" i wonder if she is confussed.... or is she?

I believe she was talking about rendering..or trying to render invisible.. he exact words to me were "When my husband died he was working on something that made planes damn near impossible to see, invisible or something, I don't know.. he couldn't tell me much about it" .. that's all I know and that's all she's said..

from that i would actually assume that she was talking about stealth in the form of low RCS of an airplane. But i dont 100% rule out visual stealth though im not really that convinced.

This is probably a reference to "optical stealth" aka "visual stealth".

This is a viable, real technology and is in R&D right now with GE, Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, BAE and others.

This is just an active electronic form of camoflage best suited for larger objects that are normally observed from a distance, such as aircraft, ships, tanks, etc.

A quick search of ATS will render a few topics on this.
Skunk Works New Proposal: FB-22 with Active Visual Stealth
ATS: Aircraft Cloaking Technology

Thanks for the post Intelgurl. Glad I've gotten some attention to this post.. I know that optical camoflage is real and impressive technology, but to think this was being worked on many years ago is astounding.. I understand that this wasn't something that was stumbled upon but it still blows my mind.. I was also wondering if this new engine could be or some kind of new troop deployment aircraft or something along those lines.. thanks again for the post. Jeff

I would suspect that this has NOTHING to do with stealth but is a version of a 3 spool turbofan engine that has been in the works there and at Williams for years now.

Of course, I can't provide a link to prove it, so no doubt I'm wrong.

Optical stealth has been worked on for years. You can even come across quotes from senior USAF officials who admit to testing the technology. As IG pointed out, there are public proposals for such technologies to be employed.

As far as transport engines go, I don't see the connection. Transport engines for the military will probably focus on improving things like gas milage and reliability. If they are talking VERY high tech, perhaps they will look at using a supersonic or even hpersonic cruising engine.

That would be sweet!

Ok, so back to the original story of the engine and not the stealth tech, As AmericanMadMan mentioned, what "transport" engine could cost several billion dollars and be under military contract?.. I don't know, when I see "transport engines" I think commercial aircraft not military.. so, I'm kinda stumped, I will do some more research on this, but I'm starting to wonder if the engine story is just disinformation or as I said, some kind of troop transport or what not? but the news story specifically said "the next generation of military engines"..

Just one a side note for this thread.. GE has already made a nuclear powered aircraft engine.. How about that.. I didnt know.. Hadda do some research to find it out.. but.. damn

Originally posted by Ox
Just one a side note for this thread.. GE has already made a nuclear powered aircraft engine.. How about that.. I didnt know.. Hadda do some research to find it out.. but.. damn

I know the Goverment has done alot of work on Nuclear Rocket engines in the N.E.R.V.A project, but I think they ended it after they determined them to be too dirty (radioactive)

I have heard though they have built nuclear reactors small enough to be put in planes but never heard if they actually made a nuclear powered plane. I would think a nuclear power plane would have some interesting advantages over a convential one like a 20 year run time without refueling

I wouldnt be shocked if they tried something like that

All I know is they had built an engine and decided it was too "dangerous" to have radiation flying around.. so.. I have no idea what came of it though.
However.. I have heard stories and read threads saying that the TR-3B is supposedly run off of a nuclear power plant.. interesting idea.. alot of power to play with

The closed cycle nuclear engine was deemed too heavy to fly. Also the open cycle as mentioned above would have left a radioactive plume.

The DOD did look at a nuclear powered cruise missile and it got as far as the reactor development phase. The tests were done on the NTS at Jackass Flats and the it was called Project Pluto. Would have been a massive missile that could fly Mach 3 at sealevel. The shock wave would have cause alot of damage on its own right and the radiation it spewed would have been brutal. Thankfully it was canceled



Back on topic:
2.7 Billion for engines and/or MRO for the JSF engine is not out of the realm of possibility. GE supplies alot of engines to the military and 2.7 billion for such a project is not that much.

www.geae.com...

[edit on 11/2/05 by FredT]

Interesting.. Now doubt the thing would be ridiculously heavy.. What if GE was opening that "file" (so to speak) up again and trying to find a way of making it lighter? more.. marketable? safer?

Can you imagine the amount of power you would have to propell an aircraft?

The contract awarded a couple of months ago was for GE to continue development of its F136 engine. The F136 will compete with the P&W F135 engine currently powering the JSF within a few years. It's not really a 'new' engine, as they've been developing it for years. It's just that the contract itself is new. It will be a standard low bypass ratio turbofan engine in the 35klb thrust class. Oh and those who picked out transportation as being related to locomotives are absolutely correct. GE groups GE Aircraft Engines and GE rail technology into one group and call it Transportation.

Originally posted by Ox
Interesting.. Now doubt the thing would be ridiculously heavy.. What if GE was opening that "file" (so to speak) up again and trying to find a way of making it lighter? more.. marketable? safer?

You may be able to make it work but it would be a political nightmare and I doubt that any foreign country would allow it to operate from its shores. If one crashed, could they guarantee that their would not be a loss of radioactive material?

EditL You are right about the power, a UAV could literaly take up permant station over hot spots

[edit on 11/2/05 by FredT]