August 5, 2026 - No. 31 In This Issue : FAA Certifies Boeing 737 MAX 7 : Attackers are targeting open-source AI just as Big Tech is embracing it : Vayu Aerospace Review : Boeing dismantled an early 777X airframe to avoid costly reworksJuly 19, 2026 : Can AI build a jet engine? : Pratt & Whitney Says GTF Upgrade Kit On Track For 2027 Rollout : F-35 Engine Core Upgrade to Face Critical Review in August, Flight Testing in 2030 : GE Aerospace Sets Up Dedicated F404-IN20 Line to Speed Up Tejas Mk1A Deliveries, Aims for 52 Engines by Next Year : Rolls-Royce issues Burnham ultimatum over £3bn jet engine project : Our flight test team (Boeing) found everything is bigger in Texas, including the wind. : Unapproved Parts Cause Flap Binding During Flight FAA Certifies Boeing 737 MAX 7 The manufacturer is now authorized to begin commercial production of the aircraft. Zach Vasile Monday, August 03, 2026 at 02:50 PM ET Verified Edited By: Ryan Ewing The 737 MAX 7, being unveiled for the first time in 2018. (Photo: Boeing) Key Takeaways: After years of delays, Boeing’s smallest 737 MAX variant, the MAX 7, has been certified by the FAA. The agency announced Wednesday that it issued an amended type certificate and updated production limitation record for the type, which was initially expected to enter commercial service in 2019. “The approval reflects years of sustained work to resolve complex technical issues and complete a thorough review of the airplane’s design and supporting safety analyses,” the FAA said in a news release. “Throughout the process, the FAA performed or directly reviewed significant work involving flight controls, system safety assessments, human factors, flight crew alerting, and other novel, complex, or safety-critical areas, while also requiring testing, design changes, and additional analysis where necessary.” The agency said that, before granting approval, it required Boeing to incorporate improvements spelled out in the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act, and in NTSB recommendations following two fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019. These enhancements included updates to the MAX 7’s flight control software and crew alerting system, and a redesigned engine anti-ice system. The changes “provide pilots clearer information and warnings and prevent the engine inlet from overheating and potentially weakening the surrounding structure,” the FAA said. Boeing is now authorized to begin commercial production of the aircraft. The company had not issued its own statement on the certification as of Monday afternoon. Boeing first announced the MAX 7 in 2016, and flight testing began two years later. But plans to get the aircraft certified and delivered within 2019 fell by the wayside after the worldwide grounding of the MAX series between 2019 and 2020. Later, serious problems with the type’s engine anti-ice system emerged, requiring a complete redesign. Boeing was also stripped of its ability to self-certify aircraft during this time, which further slowed the testing and approval process. The FAA said its inspectors will remain on site at Boeing production facilities to closely monitor the company’s manufacturing process, including its safety management system and broader safety culture. Share this story Attackers are targeting open-source AI just as Big Tech is embracing it “We're going to be doing this forever,” security pros say, describing a race to find and patch holes in the AI era. BY PATRICK TUCKER SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR • AUGUST 2, 2026 08:00 AM ET • ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE • AI & AUTONOMY • INDUSTRY The future of AI will be driven in significant part by startups and small players using open-source software to make their own, cheaper, more efficient versions of Claude or ChatGPT, tech leaders finally admitted this week. For companies like AWS, the challenge now is protecting those public tools from increasingly sophisticated attacks from China, Russia, North Korea, or other players. “Open-weight models—AI models that anyone can download, inspect, modify, and run on their own infrastructure—are an important part of that foundation because they make advanced AI more accessible, adaptable, and widely available,” reads a July 24 statement by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and co-signed by Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and a host of other companies. How open won The statement shows a dramatic reversal by companies that made fortunes off of proprietary software and have invested billions in OpenAI, Anthropic, and other frontier AI labs whose primary business is closed AI models. Dramatic, yes. But years in the making. Satya Nadella illustrates how quickly sentiment among leading tech firms has changed. In 2024, the Microsoft CEO described proprietary models as critical to safety. Closed-source AI, he said, “allow[s] us to do deep end-to-end red-teaming, alignment, and safety evaluations before exposing them to the world.” Microsoft had invested $13 billion in OpenAI by that point. AWS, another signatory of Huang’s statement, this week completed a $50 billion investment in OpenAI; the Amazon spinoff has also put money into rival lab Anthropic. Both of those investments were bets that the intellectual property of a small number of labs was going to be better and easier to safeguard than code made, often, by volunteers. Related articles Anthropic confirms its AI breached 3 organizations during testing More than 30 companies form open-source AI alliance What has changed since 2024? Several things: A growing body of research showed that relatively cheap open-weight models were steadily catching up to the performance of closed ones. The American public is increasingly pessimistic about AI. The Pentagon wants AI that it can control and can operate without large, targetable data centers. But for tech giants like Microsoft and AWS, the biggest change since 2024 is their evolution from provider of AI to provider of tools, space, and security for open-source and open-weight AI developers. During AWS’ earnings call on Thursday, CEO Andy Jassy boasted of more than 10 models in Amazon’s Bedrock platform, which allows users to build their own generative models. Nadella did the same on behalf of Microsoft this week. “We offer the broadest model catalog in the cloud, with over 11,000 models, including the latest from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, xAI,” and Microsoft itself. Venture capitalist Chris Dixon in his 2025 book Read, Write, Own describes this phenomenon as “commoditizing the complement.” Big Tech’s recent open-source enthusiasm is not unlike Oracle’s support for the development of the open-source Linux operating system in 2006. Oracle’s strategy, as Dixon describes it, was to get volunteers to make and maintain an operating system that was cheaper than Microsoft Windows. And they did. Today, Microsoft and AWS see themselves more and more not as the future’s most powerful builders of AI but sellers of tools, services, computing resources, etc., to a wide ecosystem of AI builders—including their own. Among those services are AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Amazon Inspector, which help find malware and vulnerabilities in builder code, including code from open-source libraries. Poisoning the future AWS said adversaries are increasingly turning to AI not just to find vulnerabilities in open-source code, but to poison those code libraries in ways even other AI security programs don’t detect; for instance, malware that only executes when a user issues a prompt that has a typo or that only works when other code is entered into the library later. This dangerous code is often cloaked in helpful suggestions. “How does that malicious package or software get into that open source?” asked Rick Anthony, Sr., who manages Amazon Inspector. “Attackers are gaining trust… They're going out and they're acting like real developers. You know, they're creating packages, and these packages are doing real useful benefits.” These techniques are easier to execute with AI coding agents, Anthony said. “They can sit there and have very reasonable-looking contribution histories. They can have very useful release cycles, and before you know it, these attackers look like good citizens within the open-source community.” Attackers are also exploiting the fact that more and more security reviews now happen via AI agents, which have weaknesses and blind spots. “What we're going to see is attackers not only try to fool the humans, but try to fool the AI by giving it enough evidence to convince it that what you're running is ‘OK.’” China and Russia are in a great position to carry out such attacks because they don’t face penalties for running experiments on real-world targets, AWS Chief Security Officer Stephen Schmidt said. he was He said he is “really concerned” about them. AWS is employing red teams running with their own AI agents to find vulnerabilities in code before adversaries can exploit them, but also to attack emerging open-weight models, hoping to discover potential adversaries' tactics before adversaries do. But finding a hole or vulnerability is only the first part of the challenge, Schmidt said. Developing an actually useful patch takes longer. So AWS is also looking to speed up sending its fixes to the problems it encounters, and then test them again against threats they haven’t yet thought of. “We test the [patches] for not only performance but also the way that they respond to certain kinds of adverse behavior, because we know that the adversaries are going to go after them as soon as we release them to the public,” Schmidt said. That, too, will become increasingly difficult for more and more organizations precisely because defenders are now using AI to find more vulnerabilities. Following Anthropic’s release of its powerful Mythos model to a handful of companies, the number of vulnerabilities researchers found and disclosed quickly doubled, as did the number of patches. Each new bug found is a victory, but it also increases the work to develop a good patch. “We are running this as a security industry as a sprint—oh my gosh! You know this big thing called Mythos came out, and we’ve got to do all this vulnerability identification. This is going to be the long haul. We're going to be doing this forever” Schmidt said. The ramifications of that for future software development, and AI model building in particular, are significant. New AI builders will have to invest in protective AI at the same rate they invest in building new tools, he said. That’s one reason why not everyone is excited about the future of open-source models. Anthropic is notably absent from Huang’s statement. The company’s CEO issued his own statement this week, stating that he isn’t for banning open-weight models outright, but he supports mandatory safety testing for all models, as well as other measures to curb China’s ability to copy powerful models like Mythos. Anthropic researcher Julie Merz was more direct about the threat in a Sunday post on X: “This time next year there will be the internet hitting every rural hospital/city council/etc at once with crypto locker attacks,” she said. “I think there’s a shocking lack of imagination in a lot of the CEOs/influencers pushing open models.” Vayu Aerospace Review @ReviewVayu · Jul 23 The first indigenous Expendable Turbo Jet Engine of 350 kg thrust class, designed by DRDO’s Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE), has been successfully developed. GTRE had identified Azad Engineering, Hyderabad as Industry partner for the manufacturing and assembly of the engine. On 22 July 2026, the engine was successfully realised and delivered to GTRE by Azad Engineering, a landmark achievement for India's aerospace and defence ecosystem. This indigenous turbojet marks real progress toward self-sufficiency in critical aerospace propulsion. Boeing dismantled an early 777X airframe to avoid costly reworks July 19, 2026 Boeing quietly scrapped and dismantled one of its earliest-built 777X airframes because the complex modifications required to bring it up to final certification standards were deemed too expensive. [1] The aircraft, a 400-seat 777-9 known by its tracking number WH007 (line number 1611), was the seventh 777X ever manufactured. It left the Everett, Washington factory in the summer of 2019 and was originally partially painted in Emirates livery. However, the jet never flew and sat dormant for six years at Paine Field before it was quietly taken apart in late summer 2025. The financial write-off for this abandoned airframe was absorbed into the $15 billion in total accounting charges Boeing has accumulated throughout the delayed 777X program. [1, 2] Why Early Airframes Face Rework Boeing's "build-and-store" strategy for the 777X has left them with approximately 30 to 40 pre-built airframes in inventory at Paine Field. Because these jets were assembled years ago, they reflect older configurations. Years of design modifications, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification delays, and safety overhauls mean these parked jets require a massive, multi-year retrofitting process known as "change incorporation" before they can be legally delivered to customers. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] The scope of this rework package varies drastically depending on when the airframe was built: [1, 2, 3] • Older airframes (like WH007) require deep, invasive structural changes, component replacements, and extensive systems overhauls. • Newer airframes require lighter software updates and minor configuration fixes. [1, 2] Impact on Delivery Strategy The massive backlog of retrofits has forced a major shift in Boeing's delivery timeline: [1] • The "Terrible Teens" Risk: Major international buyers, including the program's largest customer Emirates, have expressed severe reluctance to accept these heavily modified inventory planes. Airlines fear the jets will suffer from lower residual values and higher lifelong maintenance costs. [1] • Delivery Order Skipped: Breaking traditional aviation protocol, Boeing will not deliver the 777X in the order the jets were built. Instead, freshly manufactured jets that match the finalized certification standard straight off the production line will be delivered first, starting with Lufthansa in mid-2027. [1, 2] • The Stored Fleet Lifeline: The 30+ older airframes left sitting in the Everett parking lot will be slowly modified and brought up to a common configuration baseline over a span of several years. [1, 2] If you are following the 777X program, I can provide more details on current flight test milestones, specific airline order numbers, or the technical challenges behind the folding wingtips and GE9X engines. What would you like to explore next? [1, 2] Can AI build a jet engine? JARVIS Challenge tests role of AI copilots in tough-tech engineering Categories: Academics, Engagement, Events, Faculty, Impact Stories, Research, Undergraduate Students, Vehicle Design & Engineering, Autonomous Systems & Decision-Making Artificial intelligence has rapidly transformed software engineering. Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) can create huge volumes of code and documentation; machine-learning algorithms can monitor performance and detect security vulnerabilities. But when the task is to conceive, design, and make a complex physical system such as a jet engine, are those AI tools equally transformative? This past semester, the JARVIS Challenge (Jet-engine AI Research and Validation Intensive Sprint) set out to explore whether AI can compress the design-build-test cycle, asking MIT undergraduates to discover whether AI can help them to build faster and better. “The JARVIS challenge showed that AI can substantially accelerate safety-critical hardware engineering, but engineering judgment remains the decisive differentiator. An AI-native engineer is not defined by using AI, but by leading it — knowing when to trust it, when to challenge it, and how to translate AI outputs into working hardware. Manufacturing — not engineering design or analysis — remained the fundamental rate-limiting step,” says Professor Zolti Spakovszky, director of the MIT Gas Turbine Laboratory. The teams, the tools, the task The challenge gave undergraduates four weeks to design, fabricate, assemble, and test a small gas turbine aero engine, using AI as their primary engineering partner. The objective: build a “JARVIS-class” single-spool jet engine producing 50–100 pounds of thrust, running on Jet-A, and completing five 60-second runs. Teams had total freedom over design, materials, and fabrication. Representing nearly every department in the School of Engineering, 31 students organized into seven teams, ranging from all first-years to senior-heavy groups. Many of the competitors initially had little experience in turbomachinery, compressible flows, or, in the case of the younger students, even thermodynamics. Many had never seen the inside of a gas turbine before signing up to build one. At their disposal: MIT’s machine shops and manufacturing vendors; commercial software including Concepts NREC, SolidWorks, and ABAQUS; and various test rigs for characterizing and assembling individual components. The teams also had access to MIT Parley, a newly launched platform that aggregates frontier large language models through a single interface. Through Parley, JARVIS leads could see directly how the students were using the AI tools, including their prompts, the cost per prompt, the specific LLMs being used, and other critical information. The JARVIS leads secured early access to Parley for all participants, and with financial support from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and corporate sponsors Safran, Voyager Technologies, and Beehive Industries, students had access to essentially unlimited use of AI. The sponsors were drawn by recruiting interest and genuine curiosity about how AI might reshape engineering workflows. “We see this as the future of engineering,” Ryan (Hal) Hefron of Voyager Technologies told the students. “You’re honing skills that are not just nice to have — they’re going to be the future baseline in the engineering workforce.” Vincent Garnier, managing director of Safran Tech, watched the competition unfold with excitement. “JARVIS was a genuine experiment, a learning endeavor. We frankly didn’t know what to expect, from the students or from the AI models. What struck me coming from the students was: first, the enthusiasm to explore; then, as the project developed, they all came to the cool-headed realization of what AI could or could not help them with, and then almost instantly adapted for that,” he says. “It makes me confident that this generation of leading engineers will probably not fall prey to easy and shortsighted use of AI, and will do so by keeping ever more in contact with experiments — physical or thought experiments.” The faculty leadership — professors Zachary Cordero, Zolti Spakovszky, Masha Folk, and Andreea Bobu of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, along with Lincoln Laboratory engineers and a team of teaching assistants — were there to ensure safety. In weekly progress reviews, they would critically evaluate the student progress and assess how the students were using AI. Spakovszky developed a careful technique for guiding teams in the right direction without giving away answers or providing help. After a team’s presentation, he might ask: “Do you know what a rabbet fit is? Take in the comment.” Where AI helps and hurts By the end of week 1, one team withdrew from the competition; the others had, with varying degrees of success, developed an initial design for their gas turbines. Different teams used AI to summarize textbooks, teach them to use design software, source vendors, create Excel sheets, answer specific questions, find references, and create comparative analysis between design decisions. One team created an agent in Parley and tasked it with serving as their project manager. By week 2, teams had to start working on detailed CAD designs, ordering parts, and prototyping their combustors. This is where the teams started to hit limitations in their use of AI. While Claude and ChatGPT were good at offering design alternatives and filling knowledge gaps, teams found that the hallucinations, sycophancy, and lack of physical understanding that have become notorious features of generative AI were undermining their confidence and slowing them down. “AI is a helpful tool, great at finding information, helping organize things, and can write well, but it can’t do design,” says Elizabeth Tupaj, a member of team 811 Crew. “The moment the engineer doesn’t know what is going on and the AI is in charge is the moment the design becomes unreliable, at least with AI at its present capabilities.” Teaching assistant John Zhang notes, “seeing this firsthand with the students reminded me how much first impressions matter. If the students couldn’t get answers from the AI early on, they quickly grew frustrated and formed a lasting opinion that precluded them from using it later.” In the final weeks, the finalists hit another obstacle no AI could solve: working with vendors. “AI searches found vendors we had no rapport with, who had no interest in our tight timeline,” students reported. “The vendors who came through were the ones our team had personal relationships with.” Of the three finalists, only Fast and Fractured achieved first-attempt ignition of their mini-combustor. The team had used AI heavily for trade studies and architecture comparisons, arriving at a viable design despite none of them having prior gas turbine experience. “The JARVIS Challenge showed what’s possible when you combine AI-enabled design with motivated students and a culture of rapid experimentation,” says Masha Folk, the Charles Stark Draper Career Development Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “The moment that stood out most was when the first student-designed combustor was installed on the test stand. It ignited flawlessly, ramped to full power, transitioned to dual-fuel operation, and then sustained stable combustion on 100 percent Jet-A fuel. This was proof that we can dramatically accelerate the cycle of design, build, and test while giving students hands-on experience with a real engineering challenge.” At the vanguard of AI-native engineering By the end of May, the two more senior teams – Fast and Fractured and 811 Crew – had completed full engine tests. Fast and Fractured, with their AI-assisted design, were delayed by vendor headaches week after week, but finally made it to test. Unfortunately, their hot fire was cut short when the rotor rubbed and seized against the stationary housing. Team 811 Crew, however, who had more exposure to turbomachinery and propulsion concepts going into the competition, emerged victorious. Their engine started, successfully transitioned to Jet-A, and generated net thrust. “As we stood there with the air-starter, hearing their engines spool up and watching them spit fire, it felt like my heart was racing out of my chest. There were so many ways it could go wrong! What these students accomplished in such a short time span is nothing short of amazing,” says PhD student Joe Chiapperi. The 811 team had been resistant to using AI throughout the competition, trusting instead to their fundamentals and teamwork. “We had people who were at least somewhat familiar with the design software, mechanical engineers who knew how to build anything, and aerospace engineers who had taken classes on the design of gas turbine engines specifically,” says Tupaj. From the start of the JARVIS Challenge, younger students used Parley more frequently and cleverly, while the juniors and seniors leveraged deeper experience. “JARVIS taught me that getting value from AI takes two things: enough expertise to judge what it tells you and catch it when it’s wrong, and enough curiosity to actually lean on it where it could help,” says Professor Andreea Bobu. “The team that moved fastest in the sprint was experienced and leaned heavily on AI to get there. The team that eventually won was more resistant to AI; they had the expertise, but that skepticism made them slower. The sweet spot seems to be knowing enough to stay in charge of the tool, and being eager enough to pick it up in the first place. To me, that’s the real opportunity ahead: training the next generation of engineers who have the judgment to direct these AI tools and the instinct to reach for them.” The competition’s clearest finding: engineering experience is a multiplier, and the human factor remains a vital element. Mastering the first principles and fundamental concepts breeds good engineering judgment and the ability to navigate strings of tough decisions in the face of incomplete information. And when it comes to building safety-critical physical systems, nothing can replace human hands and human accountability. “JARVIS has shown that AI copilots can have a multiplicative effect on engineering productivity, with judgment and first-principles thinking serving as the key differentiators among teams,” adds teaching assistant Kyle Woody. But the implications of AI in aerospace are significant. If small teams using well-managed AI copilots can compress design-build-test cycles from years to weeks, the consequences for workforce structure, R&D timelines, and competitive dynamics could be substantial. The students who tackled the JARVIS Challenge are among the first engineers to grapple with those stakes not as a thought experiment, but in a machine shop, with a jet engine on the test stand. “JARVIS highlighted the power of AI in the design of physical systems,” says Cordero, associate director of the MIT Gas Turbine Laboratory. “But it also showed that the key to unlocking that power is education, through coursework, internships, and hands-on extracurriculars like MIT Motorsports and Rocket Team. Performance in JARVIS correlated strongly with year in school. My main takeaway is that in the AI era, education is more valuable than eve Pratt & Whitney Says GTF Upgrade Kit On Track For 2027 Rollout Sean Broderick July 16, 2026 Credit: RTX MIDDLETOWN, Conn.—Pratt & Whitney anticipates regulators will sign off on the PW1100G geared turbofan (GTF) hot section upgrade kit around the end of the year and is preparing for anticipated high demand for the performance-improving package from customers. “We’re going through final certification right now,” Pratt & Whitney Commercial Engines President Rick Deurloo said during a recent, pre-Farnborough Airshow media briefing here. “It’ll probably get over the finish line sometime by the end of this year, early next year, and we’ll start incorporating those into our MRO visits.” Pratt is producing kits in anticipation of the under-review configuration earning European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) sign-off following required flight testing. “It will be rolled out into the market starting simultaneously to certification, effectively,” Deurloo said. Allocation of the initial kits will be based in part on customers’ operating environments. Airlines that fly regularly in harsh conditions, such as desert regions or areas with low air quality, will be prioritized. “I’m not going to have it for every shop [initially],” Deurloo said. “We’re going to look at our most harsh environments and put it in there first, and then over time we’ll incorporate it within the fleet.” Announced during the 2025 Paris Air Show, the kits incorporate about 35 hot section parts developed for the PW1100G Advantage engine into in-service PW1100Gs. Recently certified for the Airbus A320neo family, the Advantage is designed to double on-wing life compared to most updated pre-Advantage standard. The most advanced baseline PW1100G configuration includes a series of durability improvements rolled out in recent years in part to address challenges in harsher environments. Pratt anticipates most customers will opt for the Hot Section Plus upgrade as it becomes available, though a few may determine the latest PW1100G standard meets their needs compared to investing in the kit. “Some operators are having a relatively very positive experience with time on wing, where they may not need [the upgrade] to the same degree others would,” Deurloo said. F-35 Engine Core Upgrade to Face Critical Review in August, Flight Testing in 2030 July 28, 2026 | By Stephen Losey DAYTON, Ohio—A major planned upgrade for the F-35 fighter’s engine is expected to reach a major milestone in August when it undergoes its critical design review, an Air Force official said July 27. John Sneden, the service’s portfolio acquisition executive for propulsion, told reporters at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference here that the so-called Engine Core Upgrade is “proceeding well.” ECU is a major effort to modify the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s existing F135 engines, made by Pratt & Whitney, to give them more thrust and cooling power—attributes that are needed to support a series of extensive F-35 upgrades known as Block 4, as well as future improvements. The Air Force is also pursuing an upgraded power and thermal management system to complement the ECU. The critical design review is an important milestone in the progression of a major defense program. Acquisition experts scrutinize all elements of a system and verify its design is stable, is likely to meet performance requirements, and is on track to meet its cost goals. After the ECU program’s design review is finished, Sneden said, it is scheduled to undergo ground testing in late 2027. Flight tests will start around 2030, Sneden said. When Pratt announced in July 2024 that ECU had passed its preliminary design review, the company said the critical design review was expected for mid-2025. But the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center said in a statement to Air & Space Forces Magazine that the planned date for ECU’s critical design review has not changed during the last two years, since passing its preliminary design review. AFLCMC said the Air Force did not make a similar projection to Pratt’s announcement and never expected the CDR to take place in 2025. The Government Accountability Office said in a September 2025 report that while the preliminary review validated ECU’s design met expectations, it found “major risks” such as a lack of integrated development and test schedules between the engine and the F-35, parts that were not arriving in time to support testing, and immature test plans. GAO said in the report that production on the engine upgrade is expected to begin in 2031. In its 2027 budget request, the Air Force is seeking a major infusion of cash to make sure it meets its production targets despite the slip in the design review schedule.. Budget documents show the service is seeking $317.5 million for the entire F-35 propulsion enterprise, up from around $121 million in 2026, much of it for the Engine Core Upgrade and the Power and Thermal Management Upgrade. The increase is meant “to accelerate the development and delivery of F135 ECU and F-35 [power and thermal management upgrade]. Both are critical propulsion upgrades for enhanced fleet readiness,” according to budget documents. “Acceleration allows for achieving target fielding dates as well as support to the Block 4 aircraft.” GE Aerospace Sets Up Dedicated F404-IN20 Line to Speed Up Tejas Mk1A Deliveries, Aims for 52 Engines by Next Year Raghav Patel In a major boost for India's indigenous aerospace sector, American engine manufacturer GE Aerospace has launched a specialised production facility exclusively for the F404-IN20 turbofan engine. This strategic move aims to drastically accelerate engine shipments for the Tejas Mk1A light combat aircraft, resolving the prolonged supply chain bottlenecks that previously hampered the fighter jet's manufacturing timeline. To smooth out these earlier constraints, GE has integrated its proprietary "FLIGHT DECK" lean operating model into the revitalised production approach. With the new assembly infrastructure in place, GE has firmly committed to dispatching between 20 and 22 engines by the close of this year, and an additional 30 units next year. This rapid turnaround is essential to meeting the Indian Air Force's strict target of operationalising the first full Tejas Mk1A squadron by March 2027. Over the past couple of years, the slow arrival of F404 engines emerged as the primary hurdle for the Tejas project. While Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) successfully built the airframes—with reports indicating that approximately 30 structures are already fully assembled—they were left waiting on the factory floor without their crucial powerplants. Consequently, this mismatch severely delayed HAL's intended rollout strategy. To clear this backlog, GE Aerospace overhauled its industrial capacity by restarting and dedicating a continuous supply chain for the F404-IN20, a variant custom-designed for the Tejas Mk1A featuring a higher-flow fan and single-crystal turbine blades. This dedicated line is structured to bring back stability to the delivery process, guaranteeing that HAL receives a steady, uninterrupted flow of engines as they scale up aircraft production. Currently, India stands as the world's most significant buyer of the F404-IN20 engine. The Indian Air Force initially signed a firm contract for 83 Tejas Mk1A fighters, which was later bolstered by government clearance for 97 more units. This colossal procurement brings the total fleet requirement to 180 aircraft. Because every single fighter requires one primary engine along with several spares for lifecycle maintenance, the sheer volume of this order transforms India into a vital long-term operator of the GE F404 series. The magnitude of this requirement directly justified GE’s substantial financial and operational investment into restarting a production line that had remained dormant for over five years. By securing 20 to 22 engines before the end of this year, HAL will finally be able to equip its stockpiled airframes and swiftly deliver them to the Indian Air Force. Furthermore, the anticipated delivery of 30 additional powerplants next year will reinforce the manufacturing tempo, allowing HAL to steadily push its annual Tejas Mk1A production rate towards a goal of 24 to 30 aircraft per year across its Bengaluru and Nashik facilities. This resurgence in the propulsion supply chain arrives at a pivotal moment for India's defence strategy. While awaiting the engines, HAL has been expanding its assembly footprint and outfitting the Mk1A with cutting-edge domestic technologies, including the Uttam Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, next-generation electronic warfare suites, and locally developed weapon systems. In addition to meeting domestic needs, a reliable stream of F404 engines significantly bolsters the export potential of the Tejas Mk1A. With guaranteed engine availability and predictable delivery dates, the platform becomes a much more attractive and dependable option for allied nations looking to modernise their own air forces. Looking ahead, while the F404 remains the backbone of the Mk1A fleet, India's upcoming aerospace projects are shifting towards more robust propulsion technologies. The heavier Tejas Mk2 will be powered by the advanced GE F414-INS6 engine. Similarly, the fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) will utilise the F414 in its early phases, before eventually incorporating a highly anticipated, domestically produced high-thrust engine for its later blocks. Rolls-Royce issues Burnham ultimatum over £3bn jet engine project Christopher Jasper Jul 21, 2026 Tufan Erginbilgic said Rolls-Royce was exploring funding agreements with foreign governments that could see the company produce overseas - Hollie Adams/Bloomberg Rolls-Royce has warned Andy Burnham that his Government must back a £3bn plan for new short-haul jet engines or put 40,000 UK jobs at risk. Tufan Erginbilgic, the company’s chief executive, said on Tuesday that Labour should pledge financial support to help Rolls-Royce build engines for the next generation of jets being developed by Airbus and Boeing or risk it moving production abroad. The Rolls-Royce engine programme would create 40,000 jobs, among the best-paid manufacturing roles in Britain, he said. But while Rolls-Royce wanted to build the new engines in Britain, Mr Erginbilgic said it was also exploring funding agreements with foreign governments that could see the company produce overseas. “We would like to do it in the UK because of our origin,” he said. “Do we have other options? Yes. We are a business, a global company. I am paid to do the right thing for the company.” Germany in particular is thought to be keen to secure more work on the engines. With the two manufacturers expected to select engines for the jets in the next two years, Mr Erginbilgic said the support package needed to be in place soon if Rolls-Royce is to win the contracts. Rolls-Royce is understood to have been closing in on a funding deal before Sir Keir Starmer resigned as prime minister. This raised concerns that it may need to make its case again to Mr Burnham. Mr Erginbilgic said he was encouraged by the appointment of John Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who he suggested was familiar with Rolls-Royce and its agenda, having previously served as defence secretary. “Obviously there are some different people but the same Government, so in that sense I’m hopeful,” he said at the Farnborough air show. Mr Erginbilgic said the plan to produce engines for planes set to replace the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 presented the biggest opportunity for British industry in decades. Missing out on the chance to build the new engines would squander an opportunity that might not present itself again for another 15 years, he warned. ‘Our competitors are fully funded’ Pratt & Whitney (P&W) and an alliance between General Electric and France’s Safran control the engine market for single-aisle airliners. Mr Erginbilgic said they were benefiting from levels of government support that Rolls-Royce could only dream of. “Everyone made this like, wow, this is exceptional. It is not. Competitors, some of them, are running the next generation programme fully funded,” he said. “There are only three companies that can play in this space, and two are incumbents; they get government funding, three or four times as much as I do.” Mr Erginbilgic said that in seeking to reenter a market that it abandoned 15 years ago, Rolls-Royce also faced a vastly bigger bill than its rivals. “For us to enter this, we will have to spend much more than they will because I have to develop the product and industrialise it. So I am asking for some contribution.” The former BP executive, who described Rolls-Royce as a “burning platform” after his arrival as chief executive, said the firm was continuing efforts to secure an industrial partner to help develop the new engine. P&W, with which it previously worked, is seen as the most likely candidate, though he said discussions were ongoing with “multiple parties”. “For us to enter into this, we will have to spend a lot more than they will because I have to develop the product and industrialise it. So I am asking for some contribution as governments normally do.” Our (Boeing) flight test team found everything is bigger in Texas, including the wind. Extreme winds put 737-10 to the test Flight test crews chased gusty conditions to validate the 737-10’s performance ahead of certification. June 03, 2026 in Commercial Note: See photos and videos in the original article. A 737-10 test airplane takes on crosswinds during certification testing. (Photo by Paul Weatherman) Boeing flight test teams chased gusty crosswinds above the wide-open plains in Midland, Texas, earlier this year to validate the 737-10’s autoland ― the automated system that lands the airplane in low visibility or demanding wind conditions ― for certification. Flight test, engineering, meteorology and ground support teams spent months planning and chasing suitable wind conditions to execute the work efficiently. They got what they needed in Midland: heavy winds blowing across the runway, real-world demonstrations that set the parameters for allowable airline operations. 737-10 Crosswinds Testing 737-10 Crosswinds Testing Play Video (Video by Wen Huber and Flight Operations Multimedia) Why it matters: To earn certification for the airplane, which is slated for later this year, Boeing must demonstrate performance in the most extreme conditions the airplane will see in service, including headwinds, tailwinds and crosswinds. “We guarantee that the autoland system will function in those conditions,” said Dan Mangel, the Boeing pilot who flew the 737-10 tests. “So, we have to test at or beyond those wind limits.” The pilot’s view “The 737-10 has the same autoland capability as the other MAX minor models,” Mangel said. “It’s specifically tuned to give it the same characteristics as the other models, despite being a larger airplane.” During the approach to landing, Mangel watched how the airplane tracked and whether the system was making timely corrections in gusty winds. “We’re assessing whether the airplane’s performing appropriate, timely corrections to the flight path,” Mangel said, “staying within the lateral confines of the runway to guarantee a successful landing.” “A lot of the tests were performed at winds actually in great excess of the requirement,” Mangel said. “And it’s never steady winds. It’s always in gusty winds.” Finding the weather The campaign required close weather monitoring and quick launches once conditions appeared. “We typically don’t have really good fidelity until two or three days out,” said Lauren Auerbach, a flight test engineer on the program. “So, when we’re on wind watch, we’re pretty much ready to launch within a couple of days’ notice.” A team effort The effort is a coordinated operation involving meteorologists, test operations, ground operations, engineering and flight crew. “There was a lot of sacrifice that the team brought forth,” said Arlo Shen, a flight controls engineer on the 737-10 program, noting that the team “truly believes in the work that they're doing, and they truly want to certify this amazing product.” Looking ahead Test results support ongoing certification work and support the program’s delivery timeline. This work supports BCA priorities on embedding the Safety & Quality Plan into operations and certifying development programs. Boeing is working to certify the 737-7 and 737-10 in 2026. Unapproved Parts Cause Flap Binding During Flight The flight instructor told investigators that while retracting the flaps on the Cessna R172E after performing a practice stall recovery, they heard a loud “pop.” He took over the flight controls from the student pilot and noticed that the ailerons were jammed. He elected to make an emergency landing on a highway near Hillrose, Colorado. While maneuvering toward the highway, the CFI was only able to use the rudder for directional control and did not change the flap configuration. He landed on the highway without incident. An examination revealed that the left inboard flap support exhibited damage consistent with binding. The outboard portion of the left flap also exhibited evidence of contact with the inboard portion of the left aileron. The left flap inboard track angle brackets (that are part of the flap track rib assembly) were pushed forward and detached from their installed location by the flap support arms. According to a representative from the airframe manufacturer, the angle brackets did not appear to be components produced by an authorized manufacturer. The rivets on the left flap inboard angle brackets were not painted, and the brackets were not painted. All other brackets appeared to be original parts and had been painted. A review of the airplane logbooks did not reveal any entry for removal or installation of the left inboard angle brackets. Inspection panels were removed, and the left flap direct cable was found loose. Aircraft power was applied, and the electric flaps were lowered slightly. Tension returned to the direct cable. The left flap was lowered to its full down position. The motor and down limit microswitch functioned normally. The left flap was removed. The upper left flap inboard flap roller did not rotate smoothly. No other anomalies were found with the flap rollers or mounting hardware. Both left flap tracks exhibited mushrooming deformation, expanding the track span to about 0.6 inches. According to the manufacturer, the maximum amount of wear in the flap track slot opening is 0.030 inch and a flap track slot with a slot that exceeds 0.6035 inch should be replaced. Wear on the sides of the flap track should not exceed 10% of the track thickness and there should be no roller wear. Probable Cause: The binding of the left flap due to improper maintenance. NTSB Identification: 194713 To download the final report. Click here. This will trigger a PDF download to your device. This July 2024 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others. Curt Lewis