Output of small military jet engines will double in three years and top 8,000 a year by 2028, a consultancy says, as drone warfare, cheap cruise missiles and Iran-war replenishment jolt a sleepy corner of aerospace.
Annual production of small military jet engines will double within three years and exceed 8,000 units by 2028, the aerospace consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory said Thursday.
The forecast appeared in an opinion column by Kevin Michaels, managing director of the Ann Arbor, Michigan, firm and a contributing columnist for Aviation Week, which published the piece Aug. 20. No earlier public version of that firm-level unit projection could be found.
“While the environment is volatile and fast-changing, AeroDynamic Advisory expects production of small propulsion military engines to double in the next three years and exceed 8,000 per year by 2028,” Michaels wrote.
The figure is a consultancy estimate, not a Pentagon production order. Michaels defined the market as engines producing less than 5,000 pounds of thrust — the powerplants inside cruise missiles, target drones, uncrewed aircraft systems, loitering munitions and jet trainers, not the fighter engines that dominate defense propulsion budgets.
Why a sleepy segment suddenly matters
For most of the post-Cold War period, Michaels wrote, the small-engine business was among the least dynamic corners of aerospace, a place where “Good enough was good enough.”
That premise collapses when defenders must fire expensive interceptors at cheap one-way drones, and when the United States wants thousands of affordable offensive missiles a year instead of hundreds of exquisite ones.
Michaels listed five drivers: the cost-exchange problem exposed in Ukraine and the Middle East; new low-cost U.S. missile programs; collaborative combat aircraft, or CCAs; replenishment of Tomahawk and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile stocks expended in the Iran war; and allied efforts to reduce dependence on American suppliers.
“These systems will require expendable propulsion solutions that cost only a fraction of traditional cruise missile engines while still meeting mission requirements,” he wrote.
Two contracts, three days earlier
Two industrial events on Aug. 17 illustrate the pull.
GE Aerospace and Kratos Defense & Security Solutions announced from Cincinnati that their GEK800 turbofan had received the U.S. military type designation F143-ZZ-100 along with an Air Force engineering, manufacturing and development contract to serve as a second-source engine for JASSM. The 800-pound-thrust engine traces to work begun in 2023 with Air Force Research Laboratory support and has logged more than 50 engine starts in ground testing at Kratos and GE Aerospace facilities, and completed altitude testing in 2025 at Purdue University’s Maurice J. Zucrow Laboratories.
“The F143 designation and EMD award are a testament to the strong performance and capability of the GEK800 engine and the strength of our partnership with Kratos,” said Amy Gowder, president and CEO of GE Aerospace Defense & Systems.
Kratos President and CEO Eric DeMarco said the two companies were working with the Air Force to support the Department of War in “reindustrializing U.S. manufacturing capacity and capability in the area of low cost, rapidly manufacturable, in large quantities, jet engines for drones, cruise missiles and other systems.” The department, he said, “is providing industry clear demand signals, including multi-year contractual framework agreements for missile systems.”
Michaels described the GE-Kratos arrangement as a joint venture. In their own materials, the two companies describe a teaming agreement that began as a memorandum of understanding at the 2024 Farnborough International Airshow and expanded in June 2025 to cover the 1,500-pound-thrust GEK1500.
The same day, the Navy awarded Raytheon, an RTX business, a contract valued at $22.9 billion to accelerate Tomahawk production. Reuters reported, citing Raytheon, that the seven-year deal targets more than 1,000 missiles a year; the news agency put current output at 60.
“This landmark $22.9 billion investment accelerates the delivery of Tomahawk missiles to our warfighters at unprecedented speed,” said Hung Cao, acting secretary of the Navy.
The math behind 8,000
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in April that more than 1,000 Tomahawks and more than 1,100 JASSMs were expended during 39 days of fighting before a ceasefire in the Iran war, against an estimated prewar JASSM inventory of about 4,400. CSIS put the cost of a single JASSM at $2.6 million.
The Air Force, meanwhile, is buying cheap. Service documents reported by Air & Space Forces Magazine in April show more than $12.6 billion for nearly 28,000 rounds over five years under a program the Air Force calls the Family of Affordable Mass Munitions and that Breaking Defense has rendered as the Family of Affordable Mass Missile. Annual quantities climb from 1,000 in fiscal 2027 to 7,990 in fiscal 2031.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the Air Force chief of staff, told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on June 9 that the first munitions were “on track to start production” in the fall. Budget language for the program calls for integration and flight demonstrations of affordable, highly manufacturable small turbine engines.
The Pentagon added a second channel in May, signing framework agreements with Anduril Industries, CoAspire, Leidos and Zone 5 Technologies to buy more than 10,000 low-cost cruise missiles over three years beginning in 2027.
Incumbents silent, newcomers loud
Michaels identified Williams International and Safran Power Units as the segment’s two incumbents. Williams powered first-generation U.S. cruise missiles in the 1970s with what Michaels called a 700-pound-thrust F107, a program he wrote that he worked on early in his career; a National Museum of the U.S. Air Force fact sheet lists the F107-WR-101 variant at 600 pounds.
Neither Williams nor Safran Power Units had issued a public statement responding to the forecast as of Friday.
Honeywell Aerospace, which ran the core of its HON1600 engine in September 2025, has pitched scale as its advantage. “We manufacture more than 2,000 turbines in this class each year and can easily accommodate production to meet CCA engine demand by the Air Force and allied military forces,” said T.J. Pope, the company’s engine strategy and growth leader.
Beehive Industries, a Colorado additive-manufacturing startup that won a $29.7 million Air Force contract in April and announced a $70 million expansion in southwest Ohio in July, has set its own goal of building up to 8,000 jet engines a year — a single-company capacity target, not the same thing as AeroDynamic’s market forecast.
Not everyone expects the incumbents to lose. Richard Aboulafia, also a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, told Breaking Defense in September 2025 that he thought established suppliers retained the edge. “Turbines are not a space that’s easily disrupted with new technology,” he said. “But on the other hand, maybe this is one of those areas where a startup could take a totally clean sheet approach.”
Michaels struck a similar note of caution, writing that newcomers must show not just technical performance but manufacturing discipline, quality assurance, affordability and the ability to scale fast. “There will be supplier failures and teething pains,” he wrote.
Background
The competitive field now stretches well beyond the United States. Hanwha Aerospace and the Korea AeroSpace Administration launched development in May of a 4,500-pound-class turbofan for CCAs, targeting 2029. In Turkey, Kale Jet Engines is prototyping its KTJ-400 and KTJ-1200 turbojets. Britain, France and Italy are pursuing the MBDA-led Stratus missile program; UK Defence Minister Luke Pollard said in a written parliamentary answer this month that airframe, engine, warhead and seeker testing is complete and that “the first full scale system tests are scheduled from 2028.”
Michaels also described a similar European engine collaboration between Rolls-Royce and Safran. No primary release from either company describing such a small-engine team could be located. Rolls-Royce is separately developing its Orpheus small-engine family and holds a German government contract to design a scalable core for autonomous aircraft.
One complication for any tally: Honeywell has discussed an engine in the 5,000-to-6,000-pound class for larger, second-increment CCAs, straddling the cutoff Michaels used.
Key Takeaways
- AeroDynamic Advisory projects small military engine output will double in three years and exceed 8,000 units a year by 2028.
- Demand comes from counter-drone interceptors, low-cost missile programs, collaborative combat aircraft, Iran-war replenishment and allied missile efforts.
- GE Aerospace and Kratos won an Air Force development contract Aug. 17 for a second JASSM engine; the Navy awarded Raytheon $22.9 billion for Tomahawks the same day.
- The 8,000 figure is a consultancy forecast, not a Pentagon order. Williams International and Safran Power Units had not responded publicly as of Friday.