This article is published in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report part of Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN), and is complimentary through Apr 11, 2025. For information on becoming an AWIN Member to access more content like this, click here.
Propulsion is usually found at the back of an aircraft, but in technological terms lies at the center of any new aerospace development.
Not only are investments in propulsion critical to any new breakthroughs, as our colleague Graham Warwick observed on these pages last week. The details of any new trend in engines also serve to unveil future requirements of a paying customer.
A March 3 announcement by Centennial, Colorado-based Beehive Industries offers a vivid clue into the ever-evolving requirements for the U.S. military’s new class of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).
Beehive, a contract metals manufacturer with a newly developed line of small turbojet engines for drones and missiles, is now entering the CCA market. The U.S. Air Force awarded Beehive a study contract under the Propulsion Studies Prototype Project.
“As part of the study, Beehive will evaluate an additively enabled engine architecture in the 1,000-lb.-thrust class,” the company says in a news release.
The desired thrust class, implying a range of 1,000-lb. thrust to nearly 2,000-lb. thrust, is the key detail.
In 2023, the Air Force released the thrust range for the first increment of CCA prototypes, specifying a broad and surprisingly high level of 3,000-8,000-lb. thrust.
The thrust specification ruled out bids based on pioneering demonstrators of the CCA concept: namely, the 1,850-lb.-thrust Williams International FJ33-powered Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie and the 2,000-lb.-thrust General Electric J85-powered Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat.
Instead, the range swept from the 3,000-lb.-thrust Williams FJ44-3AP to the 7,600-lb.-thrust Rolls-Royce F137. Such a span can power subsonic aircraft weighing between 10,000-30,000 lb.
In the end, the Air Force appeared to settle on Increment 1 CCA prototypes at the bottom of the thrust range. The Air Force withholds specifications for the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. XQ-67 and the Anduril Industries Fury, but both appear to fall in the 10,000-lb. weight class. It is possible the Fury is smaller than the Gambit, but it is also faster with a Mach 0.95 design requirement, so it needs more thrust.
Beehive’s study project, by contrast, focuses on thrust levels between one-third and one-half of the minimum that the Air Force set for the Increment 1 CCA prototypes.
And Beehive is not alone in a suddenly brimming propulsion market for small, affordable turbofan engines. In September, a Kratos/GE Aerospace team completed an initial ground test campaign of the GEK800, an engine whose designation implies a thrust range in a similar bracket as the Beehive study. Kratos Turbine Technologies also specializes in making low-cost turbojets ranging up to about 700-lb. thrust.
Moreover, Pratt & Whitney’s GatorWorks also has outlined efforts to develop small, low-cost turbofans, but revealed no details. Rolls-Royce’s U.S.-based Liberty Works also previously ran rig tests on a small, low-cost gas turbine core for the so-called attritable engine market.
To compete against these industry giants, Beehive proposes to introduce a disruptively new process based on additive manufacturing. The small company already won military contracts to 3D print a 200-lb.-thrust class engine, leading to the recent unveiling of the Frenzy engine series scheduled for delivery in October 2026. The company boasts a 14-month process from concept definition to first engine to test, versus 28 to 42 months for conventional jet engines.
The Air Force’s requirements for a planned second increment of CCAs remains unknown. Possibilities range from more expensive and larger designs to much smaller and cheaper models than the Increment 1 prototypes. If the Air Force opts to take a more exquisite approach to CCAs in the next round, requirements could still shift dramatically in the future, a feature of the CCA program’s increment approach.
Related Content
