GE GE Aerospace

By Chris Wack

The Advanced Turbine Engine Co., or ATEC, said Tuesday that it has protested the U.S. Army's decision to award General Electric Co. (GE) an engineering and manufacturing development contract for its next generation of Black Hawk and Apache helicopter engines.

Huntsville, Ala.-based ATEC is a joint venture of Honeywell International Inc. (HON) and Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp. (UTX).

The company said in a release that the protest was filed Tuesday with the Government Accountability Office.

The Army is seeking to re-engine its fleet of Black Hawk and Apache helicopters, and the engine that is ultimately selected will also power certain variants of the Army's Future Vertical Lift family of advanced rotorcraft. ATEC was notified on Feb. 1 that it wasn't selected for the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the program.

"In our review of the evaluation, we clearly offered the best value through a combination of a highly rated and technically superior engine that was judged to be much lower risk, and believe we did so significantly under the government's budget," ATEC President Craig Madden said in prepared remarks.

Write to Chris Wack at chris.wack@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 19, 2019 13:42 ET (18:42 GMT)

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