After three years of extensive construction and renovation, GE’s Electrical Power Integration Centre (EPIC) located in Cheltenham, England, is set for its grand opening in September!

EPIC represents a major investment by GE Aviation Systems, along with local government, to the development and application of end-to-end electrical power systems for aviation and defense vehicles. EPIC, along with its planned sister EPISCENTER facility in Dayton, Ohio, will become the centroid of GE’s electrical power application research & development and help define and deliver the future vision of electrical power.

The 30,000 square foot EPIC facility went through an extensive makeover to update itself to the modern GE standard. The only original structure left is the brick work, and lab equipment is moving in now.

Over the next six months, EPIC will began testing on a number of key electrical power programs. The first involves advanced solid state primary distribution equipment utilizing silicon carbide (SiC) technology developed at GE’s Global Research Center (GRC), and soon after that the Advanced Power Management System (APMS), which enables end-to-end electrical power management, from generation to distribution and control, will begin testing and validation.

The following are some snapshots of the new facility. Pretty impressive.

Boarded a plane recently? You’ve no doubt noticed that air traffic delays are bad, and they’re only getting worse — much worse. In 2009, 100 million system delay minutes cost U.S. passenger airlines nearly $6.1 billion, and those numbers just keep on rising.

One thing’s for certain: We need technology to rescue our struggling air travel system. And one such technology is GE’s Required Navigation Performance (RNP) landing approaches. This technology lets planes fly precisely-defined flight paths without relying on outdated, ground-based radio navigation — rather, it works with precise satellite navigation and advanced tech aboard the aircraft, creating shorter and more efficient flight paths that reduce delays and alleviate air traffic.

According to a new study (http://www.geaviation.com/aboutgeae/presscenter/pdf/GE_study.pdf ), Highways in the Sky, deploying RNP at 46 mid-size U.S. airports could save the following:
12.9 million gallons of fuel, 274.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide, 17,900 hours and $65.6 million in operational costs.

For more information, visit: http://www.gereports.com/see-what-more-efficient-air-travel-looks-like/.

In the summer of 2004, I was flying F/A-18C “Hornets” off the USS John F. Kennedy in the northern Persian Gulf supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Early on during the deployment, I distinctly remember sitting in the VFA-83 ready room with my squadron mates staring for hours on end at the video feed we were receiving from a Predator UAV (unmanned airborne vehicle). Although we were certainly aware at the time of UAVs and their somewhat nascent capabilities, we were in awe at the prospect of what could be in the very near future, i.e. how we could utilize UAVs on our flights later that same day. Such was the vision that we, along with myriad others in the defense world, had for UAVs and all things unmanned.

Unmanned systems are but a part of the much larger ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) world. The memory I have of the Predator video is one in a series that, for me, highlight the importance and explosive growth of ISR. There remains little doubt that the US and other nations will continue to invest in this area over the foreseeable future and beyond.

That being said, what I’d like to do in this blog is to offer up several topics that fall under the ISR umbrella and promote discussion of where we are today, where we might want to go and how we plan to get there. As with any useful dialogue, I will rely on the differing points of view of those who want to participate to help shape the dialogue and ascertain the answers to our questions.

There are a multitude of roadmaps we could use to get us started. I think it makes sense to start with UAVs, since it seems to be at the forefront of many peoples’ minds. From there, perhaps, we could broaden the conversation to unmanned systems, in general. It may make sense to then discuss how unmanned systems fit into the much larger ISR world, and then talk about the latest ISR technologies and what the long-term trends and implications look like.

I’m incredibly excited to begin this blog and I look forward to learning much more about the present and future state of ISR through our conversations.

Fly safe,

Marc Luley

On April 14, GE broke ground on what will be its new Electrical Power Integrated Systems Research and development Center (EPISCENTER) on the University of Dayton campus in Dayton, Ohio. The center will be built on about eight acres on the University of Dayton’s campus on River Park Drive.

The EPISCENTER will complement GE Aviation’s new Electrical Power Integrated Center (EPIC) located in Cheltenham, UK, which will be operational this year. Together, these two research centers will augment GE Aviation’s existing research and development capabilities, further enabling collaborative research and driving innovation.

The center’s close proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the University of Dayton Research Institute is important in order to provide significant new support to the Air Force Research Labs and the University of Dayton. The University’s researchers will work with GE to develop and deploy computer modeling, simulation and analysis of advanced, dynamic electric power systems design and controls.

The center will be directed at several markets including end-to-end electrical power starter/ generation, conversion, distribution and load technologies for civil and military aerospace applications.

-Jimmy

GE Aviation designs engines, flight paths, and advanced aircraft systems. And we wanted to share the intricate choreography of flying in all its glory. So we captured all the take-offs and landings that happen over the course of one day and combined them into one short film. Watch, and see the hidden beauty of flight reveal itself.

To see more of this episode, go to http://www.ge.com/thegeshow/flight/index.html.