♪
I'm Mike Kiernan, I work at Pratt & Whitney
as a Program Chief Engineer for the XA101 program,
which is part of the adaptive engine transition program,
where we're developing an entire engine.
It's responsible for all the engineering aspects
of managing the design and the risks
that go into that as well as the cost and schedule
to be able to execute that design.
♪
Pratt & Whitney has a very strong position
as the sole source for the fifth-generation engines
as well as a very large market share
of the fourth-generation engines for the F-15s and the F-16s.
For the next generation that we're working on now,
a lot of the needs that the customer is trying to solve
is really based around the threats.
Our enemies now have capability
that's very close to what we consider
our fifth gen capability.
And so it's really driving the need
for us to be developing even more capability
so we can maintain that superiority.
♪
Going all the way back in history,
if you look at where our current architecture is
for our current modern military fighter engines,
that really came out back in the '60s with the J57.
Pratt & Whitney had the first
afterburning two-stage turbofan engine.
And that really was the major architecture change
and step change at the time.
If we start with just grounding ourselves
to our current modern military fighter engines,
they're all based on
a two-stage turbofan configuration
with an afterburner that's broken up
into several different sections of the engine,
what we typically refer to as the fan
that's pulling in the air,
feeding a compressor or series of compressors
that are compressing that air
and then feeding it to the combustor diffuser,
where we're igniting the fuel,
sending that energy into the turbines,
both a high and a low-spool turbine
that spins the compressor and then the fan.
The afterburner is something that's unique
compared to a commercial engine,
and that's really driven by some of the mission requirements
that a military engine has relative to a commercial engine.
♪
When you're trying to go design
a new engine for a specific application,
there's really three or four major things
that you're looking at.
So as we move into the sixth gen,
there's additional requirements
for more and more thermal management capability
for the engine to offload heat from the aircraft
and power more systems.
With those requirements that we're trying to meet
from both a thermal management system standpoint
and, really, the fuel efficiency,
it's driving us to come up with technologies
that are pushing, really,
the pressures and temperatures
in the engine that we're operating at,
to levels we've never operated at before.
♪
As we've made advancements
in materials and control systems
and other things,
we're able to take those technologies
that were once targeted for a certain application
and we're now able to expand them into other areas.
Being able to control that additional complexity
has been something that we're able to do now,
whereas 20, 30 years ago,
we would have never thought was possible
It's amazing how people come together to figure out
how to take the capabilities that are out there
and apply them, really, in new ways.
The most rewarding part of my job at Pratt & Whitney
is probably twofold.
Working with people that are passionate
about what they do every day is a huge reward,
but then also, at the end of the day,
knowing that what we work on
really is critical to our national defense.
♪