A 1:1 scale model of the GCAP fighter concept is displayed at the Farnborough International Airshow 2024. (Janes/Sam Wise)
Rolls-Royce has told Janes that it is progressing with the design of the engine demonstrator for the ‘sixth-generation' fighter of the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP).
Speaking to Janes at the Farnborough International Airshow 2024 held from 22 to 26 July, Mark Tivey, business development executive of Future Programmes – Defence at Rolls-Royce, said that the engine demonstrator is being developed in consortium with Avio Aero in Italy and IHI Corporation in Japan. “The three companies are combining their technologies, skills, and engineering teams to develop the engine for GCAP.”
The companies are working towards developing a full-scale ground-based engine demonstrator, which is not a pre-production or a flying prototype. The engine demonstrator programme enables the consortium to “test technologies within the consortium, and test that we have got the compatibilities between those technologies”, Tivey said. He added that the demonstrator programme helps them “get common design tools, common design processes, [and] common audit processes”, which will eventually lead the team to develop the production engine.
According to Tivey, the consortium plans to use the engine demonstrator through the lifetime of the GCAP fighter as a testbed for future technology as the power requirements on the aircraft adapt. The ground-based test engine is being built as part of the de-risking strategy, wherein it will generate the necessary data that will feed directly into the production design and ultimately into the early flight-test aircraft.
The specifications of the engine demonstrator are not yet finalised. The UK programme is still in the concept and assessment phase, and undergoing design trade-off studies before arriving at an optimised design solution, Tivey said.
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