The partnership extends work that began in 2023 with the GEK800 engine, which provides 800 pounds of thrust for cruise missiles. Kratos brings two decades of experience in affordable propulsion for unmanned systems, while GE Aerospace’s Edison Works contributes 75 years of expertise in jet propulsion design.
“Kratos is fast, and they have much, much more flexibility,” said Mark Rettig, vice president and general manager of Edison Works Advanced Programs. “Our teams came together to evolve an optimized design process.”
Edison Works’ general manager Steve “Doogie” Russell highlighted the differences between the two companies’ strengths. “Developing a high-end, highly capable, highly survivable platform that needs to survive thousands of cycles — our company is actually really good at that,” he said. “But a low-cost model for something that only has to survive a couple of cycles, or even hours? That’s completely different.”
Stacey Rock, president of Kratos’ turbine technologies, explained the challenge of scaling designs. “Taking a large engine and scaling down is very difficult because of design, tolerances, and manufacturing. On the other end of the spectrum, building a small turbo jet and scaling it up into a world-class performance turbofan engine for a cruise missile — that’s also very difficult. This team’s really hit a sweet spot.”
The GEK800 engine was originally supported by DARPA, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy, targeting advanced cruise missile applications. “We are good at going fast and being affordable,” Rock said. “And there weren’t a large number of engines available in that class for these systems.”
Early cooperation between the two firms drew on complementary strengths. “We’ve always seen ourselves as a potential disruptor, but we needed help with production, with long-term agreements with suppliers, all of these things where we didn’t have demonstrated capability,” Rock noted. Rettig added: “We’re really good at flying families across the Atlantic. But it’s really hard to design something exquisite and make it cheap.”
According to Rettig, the approach was to meet cost targets first and “add capabilities as necessary.” Craig Young, Edison Works’ engineering director for small UAV engines, said: “The Kratos team has been able to help us think differently about a culture of rapid development.” The GEK800 engine is undergoing its fifth build this summer, with the first production model scheduled for altitude and ground testing by early next year.
“Everybody wanted an affordable engine, but they also wanted one that performed better than the current state of the art,” said Rock. He added that the GEK800 provides a scalable architecture forming “the basis of an entire family of strike engines Kratos and GE Aerospace will produce together.”
The GEK1500 engine, a 1,500-pound-thrust variant of the GEK800, is planned for a demonstration in 2026. “This is where the partnership is headed,” Rettig said. “There is more scalability opportunity in this particular architecture, and we’ve got two engines under development.”
