To learn that General Electric is using technologies developed with US military money for its half of the CFM International Leap turbofan is no great surprise. Nor is it a surprise, really, to find that GE reckons that the Air Force cash behind projects like ADVENT (advanced versatile engine technology) will drive commercial engine development beyond Leap.
Indeed, it's worth remembering that Leap's predecessor, the hugely-successful CFM-56, was designed using a high-pressure turbine based on the GE F101 engine developed for the North American B-1A bomber and now powering the Boeing B-1B Lancer (Snecma, GE's partner in CFM, provided the low-pressure section).
The reason it's all no surprise is that this is how aerospace has been operating for a century.
So, what remains eternally surprising is how Boeing can so doggedly pursue its bald-men-fighting-over-a-comb subsidies dispute against Airbus in the World Trade Organisation. While Airbus's product development people wallow in European cash largesse, Boeing insists (technically, the US government insists), it has to make do with what little it can scrape together from its hard-pressed investors and mean-spirited "commercial" lenders.
Apparently, unlike their counterparts at GE, Boeing's civil aircraft people learn nothing much from all that work the defence side of the company does under a waterfall of government money.
Just to cite one example, Boeing, along with Northrop and Vought, developed the exotic composite B-2 stealth bomber. Word on the street is some 787 customers believe that, along with nifty interior lighting and big windows, they are getting a bit of stealth bomber technology. Boeing would never imply that, of course, but one can kind of see how the idea gets stuck in people's heads.
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