Powerplant to Motivate U.S. Army Gray Eagle ER UAS

General Atomics is an American energy and defense concern specializing in the research, development, and fielding of technologies germane to nuclear fission and nuclear fusion energy. The company also produces remotely operated surveillance aircraft, including the ubiquitous MQ-9 Reaper, as well as airborne sensors and advanced electric, electronic, wireless, and laser technologies.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) announced on 15 June 2023 that the company had conducted the first flight of its new two-hundred-horsepower heavy-fuel engine on a Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) at its El Mirage, Arizona flight-test facility on 09 May 2023.

Currently, the U.S. Army is considering replacing the 180-horsepower engines by which the service’s Gray Eagle Extended Range (GE-ER) UAS fleet is powered. GA-ASI’s Heavy Fuel Engine (HFE) 2.0 is being evaluated as a possible replacement for the aforementioned, aging and underpowered mills.

Moreover, GA-ASI’s HFE 2.0 powers the modernized Gray Eagle 25M (GE-25M) aircraft currently being developed under a U.S. Army-funded program to support future Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) missions.

In 2016, GA-ASI initiated the Internal Research and Development program under which the HFE 2.0 was developed. Faced with an ongoing and worsening dearth of U.S. domestically-produced heavy-fuel aero engines and components critical to such, the program set out to design and develop a reliable, durable, U.S.-made engine.

GA-ASI and its General Atomics Europe affiliate partnered with global leaders in high-performance engine design and manufacture to develop an engine with increased horsepower, durability, and reliability. Among the concerns salient to the undertaking were Cosworth, the British automotive engineering company specializing in high-performance internal combustion engines, powertrain, and electronics for the motorsport and mainstream automotive industries; and General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS), which designed and built the engine’s dual brushless generators. Subject generators stand to dramatically reduce field maintenance of the new engine and deliver over fifty-percent more electrical power for new payloads and mission capabilities.

GA-ASI President Dave Alexander stated: “We’re very excited to see GE-ER powered by this new state-of-the-art propulsion system. In order to ensure the highest reliability and durability, we brought together a world-class team from across industry and leveraged our extensive HFE experience to deliver this solution. We’re proud to make this engine available to our U.S. Army customer.”

The new HFE powerplant’s design prioritized reducing field maintenance and extending the GE-ER’s engine-replacement interval by forty-percent.

HFE 2.0 will continue to undergo planned Independent Research and Development (IRAD) flight tests and begin qualification testing prior to year’s end.

FMI: www.ga-asi.com