Fast track: Engineering with speed

Amid industry demand for urgency, RTX engineers are innovating faster than ever

Engineers have always been the heart of innovation at RTX. Now, they are the key to answering our customers’ call for advanced aviation and defense technologies at startup-level speed.

Across the company, our 60,000 engineers use their training and problem-solving skills to deliver with precision, efficiency and urgency.

In the stories below, you’ll hear from the engineers solving problems with speed across RTX.

“RTX engineers around the world are driven by the challenge of solving our industry’s hardest problems, with the full power of the company’s technical breadth and depth at their disposal to help them move with speed and urgency.”

Juan de Bedout | Chief Technology Officer | RTX

Speeding up inspections with the help of AI

“You can have AI, you can have the tools, but engineers are the one(s) that make it happen with their creativity, with their … how can I do it differently? How can I use AI to achieve this? Is it possible? So it’s going beyond and looking for possibilities. That’s (what) the engineers are good at. … You make the magic happen combining all those elements.”

Jorge Vazquez, associate director of facilities for Collins Aerospace, Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico

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Collins circuit board

Collins Aerospace engineers created AI-enabled workflows to speed up inspections of printed circuit boards. Output has risen 14%, inspection time is down from 30 minutes to 10, and escapes have been cut in half.

Fast-tracking the fighter jet engine of the future

“Speed with accuracy is the tagline that I’ve been sharing with my team. We’ve always wanted to go fast. We’ve always wanted to be accurate. A lot of times those things don’t go hand in hand, and I think this kind of (digital) revolution allows that to be more realistic than it ever has been before.” 

Alan Seipt, validation chief for adaptive programs, Pratt & Whitney

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Pratt & Whitney is procuring hardware for the construction of its XA103 prototype ground demonstrator, which is expected to test in the late 2020s.

Pratt & Whitney engineers are using digital design to accelerate development of next-gen adaptive propulsion systems.

Using soldier feedback for faster design

“Working closely with the customer has accelerated it a lot. Now we can get the soldiers to come and try it out without having to build a real missile or go out to a real flight test range and get some early inputs from them on things that we should change, or things we should take into consideration for the design.”

Will Strauss, technology director, Next Generation Short Range Interceptor, Raytheon

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NGSRI launch

Raytheon engineers fast-tracked a new interceptor using rapid prototyping, virtual reality and soldier feedback. The system went from proof of concept to first test flight in less than six months. 

Finding viable designs fast – from billions of options

“Any given product that RTX makes, there is a huge number of ways down in the details that you could make that product. Without DISCOVER, you could only analyze a small number of them because you’re doing it manually. But we can analyze many, many more possibilities, and so that gets you to a better answer faster so that you can start your detailed design sooner and with more confidence.” 

Steve Taylor, senior principal engineer, DISCOVER program, RTX Technology Research Center

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Digital branch paths visual

RTX Technology Research Center engineers use software called DISCOVER to evaluate thousands of design options in the time it would take a human to assess just a few.

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