Stars Above, Wires Below:

Examining the Size of the US Residential Broadband Opportunity for Leo Satcom | March 2026

TECHNOLOGY & TELECOMMUNICATIONS

The Uneven Promise of Low-Earth Orbit Broadband

Starlink dominates the satellite internet market with nearly 3 million U.S. subscribers and more than 9 million globally, but its path to displacing cable and fiber in suburban America faces steep technical, economic, and competitive hurdles — even as a $42.5 billion federal broadband program undergoes a political transformation that could boost LEO's share of public funding.

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON / SAN DIEGO — February 23, 2026

BLUF: Low-Earth Orbit satellite internet has rapidly matured from novelty to essential infrastructure for rural America, yet its commercial ceiling remains constrained by physics, economics, and the entrenched strength of fiber and cable in the suburban and urban markets that represent nearly half of all U.S. households. Meanwhile, the Trump administration's reengineering of the $42.5 billion BEAD broadband subsidy program is handing LEO providers — chiefly SpaceX's Starlink — a growing share of federal deployment dollars, reshaping the competitive landscape even as Amazon prepares to launch a rival constellation.

A Stratospheric Rise — With an Earthbound Ceiling

Five years after SpaceX's Starlink began commercial service, the satellite internet market has been transformed beyond recognition. Starlink ended 2025 with more than 9 million active subscribers globally — including close to 3 million in the United States alone — up from a standing start in 2020, and now commands roughly 72 percent of U.S. residential satellite internet subscriptions, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Its nearest rivals, EchoStar's HughesNet and Viasat, have been reduced to statistical footnotes: Starlink accounted for 97.1 percent of all satellite broadband speed-test samples collected globally in the second half of 2025, per performance analytics firm Ookla, with Viasat trailing at 1.7 percent.

The numbers are a testament to the velocity of LEO deployment. SpaceX completed 165 orbital launches in 2025, of which 123 were Starlink missions. The constellation now totals more than 10,790 satellites in orbit, with regulatory authorization for up to 42,000. U.S. median download speeds tracked at 117.74 Mbps as of late 2025, above the FCC's 100 Mbps benchmark, though median upload speed of 16.91 Mbps still falls short of the agency's 20 Mbps standard.

Yet for all the momentum, a McKinsey & Company analysis published this month in Via Satellite magazine cautions that the domestic opportunity is more bounded than the headline numbers suggest. Starlink's roughly 3 million U.S. residential subscribers represent approximately 2 percent penetration of total U.S. residential connectivity subscriptions — a market share commensurate with serving the "broadband deserts" where it faces no credible competition, but far short of the scale needed to challenge cable or fiber incumbents in the suburbs and cities where most Americans live.

Mapping the Opportunity: Desert, Rural, Suburban, Urban

The McKinsey analysis, prepared by partners Brooke Stokes and Fan Gao along with consultant Kate Kucharczuk, maps broadband availability at the census-block level and segments the U.S. residential market into four distinct competitive arenas, each with sharply different LEO prospects.

The most fertile ground is what the report terms "broadband deserts" — the approximately 6 percent of U.S. households that have no terrestrial broadband infrastructure at all, or only legacy DSL copper connections. In this segment, LEO faces no technically credible competition: neither aging DSL nor geostationary satellite services from HughesNet or Viasat can reliably support video conferencing or live gaming. With LEO constellation capacity spread thinly across low population densities, rural performance is also at its peak. "The subscription base in such areas can scale without concern of traffic volume degrading performance," the report notes, contrasting the rural dynamic with urban congestion. Eleven percent of rural households have no fixed broadband infrastructure whatsoever.

A second, somewhat larger opportunity lies in rural communities — approximately 12 percent of U.S. households — that do have access to cable but not fiber. Here, LEO speeds in rural settings frequently meet or exceed cable performance, and rural cable service has historically been plagued by outages and throttling. The McKinsey report rates LEO's competitive positioning in this segment as strong.

The picture darkens in suburban America, which accounts for 46 percent of total U.S. households and is the sector where the commercial future of LEO broadband will be decided. Most suburban homes have access to both cable and fiber. Fiber is faster and often cheaper than LEO today. The report notes that even best-in-class fiber market entrants, offering superior service at lower prices than the cable incumbent, have achieved at most 40 percent penetration over five years — and incumbents have historically responded to share loss with aggressive price cuts, expanded customer retention programs, and speed upgrades.

Urban markets, at 36 percent of U.S. households, represent an even more daunting challenge. Physical obstructions from multi-unit dwellings and neighboring buildings impair line-of-sight to the constellation. Constellation capacity per user degrades dramatically in dense environments. More than 95 percent of urban households are already fiber-enabled.

Amazon Enters; A New Space Race Begins

The competitive architecture is about to become more complex. Amazon's Project Kuiper — rebranded as "Amazon Leo" in November 2025 — is preparing to launch commercial residential service in 2026, beginning in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Amazon unveiled three terminal models in late 2025, headlined by the "Leo Ultra," an enterprise-grade device featuring custom Amazon silicon, full-duplex phased-array technology, and download speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. Standard residential terminals achieved speeds up to 400 Mbps in prototype testing.

Amazon has already begun collecting BEAD funding awards in at least two states. In Nevada, Amazon Kuiper Commercial Services received $3.26 million to serve 5,027 locations, while SpaceX received $2.4 million for 2,803 locations in the same state's BEAD competition. The dual presence of the two tech giants in state broadband auctions signals a new phase of competition for federal subsidy dollars — not just consumer dollars.

Industry analysts are watching whether Amazon can leverage its manufacturing scale and logistics expertise to undercut Starlink on terminal costs, which remain a meaningful barrier to adoption. Starlink hardware currently runs from $349 to $599 for residential equipment, plus $50 to $165 per month in subscription fees, depending on tier and geography. Starlink has cut prices in some rural U.S. markets to as low as $80 per month with its Residential Lite plan.

The Federal Wildcard: BEAD's Transformation

Perhaps the most consequential variable in LEO's commercial trajectory is the fate of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program — the single largest federal investment in broadband infrastructure in U.S. history, authorized by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. As of late 2025, not a single dollar of BEAD deployment funding had flowed to a subgrantee, a product of bureaucratic delays, mapping disputes, and, more recently, a sharp policy reversal engineered by the Trump administration.

The program that President Biden's NTIA designed was explicitly fiber-first: states were required to prioritize fiber-to-the-home except where cost was prohibitive, with LEO satellite relegated to a last-resort option for truly inaccessible locations. In June 2025, NTIA issued a "BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice" that replaced that framework with a technology-neutral approach, opening the door for states to designate satellite and fixed wireless as primary technologies for a much larger share of funded locations.

The political dynamics behind the shift are not subtle. In March 2025, Evan Feinman, the outgoing BEAD program director, resigned and issued a public warning that the administration intended to channel substantial BEAD funds to Starlink. That concern has materialized in the data: a Connected Nation analysis of revised state BEAD plans found that, while fiber still accounts for 63 percent of planned deployments, LEO satellite now accounts for 22.6 percent — far exceeding its footprint under the original program design. Fixed wireless accounts for 12.1 percent.

Critics — including a coalition of 48 members of Congress led by Rep. James Clyburn and Sen. Amy Klobuchar — have argued in letters to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that satellites lack the long-term durability and performance guarantees of fiber, and that using public funds to subsidize a service that remains more expensive than cable or fiber in most markets represents poor stewardship of taxpayer resources. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has echoed these concerns in a July 2025 brief titled "Broadband Myths: LEOs Don't Belong in BEAD."

The FCC adds another layer of complexity. Under former Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, the agency revoked SpaceX's $885.5 million Rural Digital Opportunity Fund award — a decision that was reaffirmed three times by 2024 — on the grounds that Starlink had not demonstrated the ability to deliver required 100/20 Mbps speeds to the 640,000 rural locations it had won in a 2020 reverse auction. Republican commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissented, calling the denial politically motivated. Carr, now FCC chair under the Trump administration, has indicated a posture more favorable to satellite providers.

States are navigating the shifting federal landscape differently. Louisiana, which became the first state to win NTIA approval for its final BEAD proposal in January 2025 under the old framework, has since revised its plan to direct 80 percent of deployment funding to fiber while meeting updated requirements. Illinois allocated 76 percent of its $990 million BEAD award to wired technologies, 15 percent to LEO satellite, and 9 percent to wireless terrestrial — with SpaceX receiving $29.6 million of the state's allocation. Arkansas directed 76 percent of its locations to fiber, 16 percent to LEO, and 7 percent to licensed fixed wireless.

The Physics Problem: Why Suburban Scale Is Hard

For LEO providers, the suburban penetration challenge is not merely commercial — it is architectural. A satellite constellation operating in low Earth orbit serves users by dividing its total capacity across all active terminals beneath its footprint. In rural areas, where population density is low, a given constellation capacity translates into high per-user throughput. In suburban and urban markets, the same capacity must be shared across a far larger subscriber base. Scaling the subscriber base in these markets requires proportionally higher capital expenditure on constellation expansion — precisely the economics that make urban LEO penetration challenging.

The problem is compounded by the shorter operational lifespan of LEO satellites relative to terrestrial infrastructure. Cable and fiber networks, once built, can operate for decades with incremental upgrades. LEO constellations require periodic full replacement cycles — a capital burden that terrestrial incumbents do not bear, but that also, as the McKinsey report notes, creates an iteration opportunity for performance improvement with each new generation.

SpaceX has demonstrated the power of that iteration model faster than any prior satellite operator. Its early constellation, operating in the 100-550 kilometer altitude range, achieved latencies of 20-40 milliseconds — competitive with terrestrial broadband for latency-sensitive applications like gaming and video conferencing, and vastly superior to geostationary satellites hovering at 22,200 miles altitude. Starlink's highest recorded latency of 282 milliseconds, measured in the Marshall Islands in the third quarter of 2025, was still less than half the fastest GEO satellite latency measurements, per the Ookla report.

The Direct-to-Cell Frontier

Beyond residential fixed broadband, LEO operators are aggressively pursuing the direct-to-cell market — delivering connectivity directly to standard smartphones without specialized hardware. Starlink's partnership with T-Mobile yielded T-Satellite, which launched commercially in July 2025 following a beta program that attracted 1.8 million sign-ups. T-Satellite subscribers pay $10 per line per month for satellite connectivity when outside terrestrial cellular coverage.

SpaceX's strategic position in this segment was further strengthened by its acquisition of EchoStar's spectrum assets for $17 billion, adding licensed spectrum holdings to complement its constellation. The transaction is expected to accelerate SpaceX's ability to offer seamless cellular-satellite integration — a product capability that Amazon, without a cellular partnership of comparable scale, does not yet match.

The Road Ahead

The McKinsey analysis concludes that LEO is well positioned to continue winning the unserved and underserved connectivity markets and, with sufficient price decreases, could realistically penetrate connected rural markets. Material penetration of suburban and urban markets, where the largest shares of the U.S. population reside, would require either dramatic price concessions — contingent on continued terminal and constellation cost reductions — or a step-change in per-user performance as next-generation constellation architectures come online.

The global satellite internet market, valued at approximately $12.61 billion in 2025, is projected by Coherent Market Insights to reach $25.05 billion by 2032, a compound annual growth rate of 10.3 percent. North America accounted for $4.66 billion of the 2025 total. Whether those projections materialize will depend on whether LEO providers can resolve the suburban economics problem — or whether the sector's sustained growth is permanently anchored in the 6 to 18 percent of U.S. households that fiber and cable have left behind.

"Innovation through iteration has been a cornerstone in the rise of LEO constellations," the McKinsey report concludes, "and may well decide its future scale in the consumer market.

 Verified Sources and Formal Citations

[1] McKinsey & Company / Via Satellite: 'Examining the Size of the US Residential Broadband Opportunity for Leo Satcom,' March 2026 (Stokes, Gao, Kucharczuk). https://interactive.satellitetoday.com/via/march-2026/examining-the-size-of-the-us-residential-broadband-opportunity-for-leo-satcom

[2] S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan: 'The State of Satellite Connectivity (2025),' November 6, 2025. https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2025/11/the-state-of-satellite-connectivity-2025

[3] RCR Wireless / Ookla: 'Starlink is Winning the LEO-Based Internet Race in Major Markets,' February 10, 2026. https://www.rcrwireless.com/20260210/network-infrastructure/starlink-is-winning-the-leo-based-internet-race-in-major-markets

[4] WebProNews: 'Amazon Leo Takes on Starlink with 1Gbps Satellite Broadband,' December 27, 2025. https://www.webpronews.com/amazon-leo-takes-on-starlink-with-1gbps-satellite-broadband/

[5] CompareInternet: 'Amazon Leo Internet: When It Launches, Pricing & How to Sign Up,' February 2026. https://www.compareinternet.com/blog/amazon-leo-internet-availability/

[6] Congressional Research Service (R48666): 'The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program: Issues for the 119th Congress,' August 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48666

[7] Light Reading: '2025 in Review: The BEAD Goes On,' December 12, 2025. https://www.lightreading.com/broadband/2025-in-review-the-bead-goes-on-

[8] RCR Wireless: 'BEAD — 5 States Making Real Progress,' October 24, 2025. https://www.rcrwireless.com/20251024/fundamentals/states-bead-progress

[9] BranderGroup / Connected Nation: 'BEAD Broadband Status: Awards by State, October 2025,' December 13, 2025. https://brandergroup.net/2025/11/bead-broadband-status-awards-by-state-october-2025/

[10] StateScoop / ACLP New York Law School: 'At Least Half of BEAD Locations No Longer Eligible for Funding,' May 8, 2025. https://statescoop.com/bead-broadband-internet-locations-not-eligible-2025/

[11] BroadbandNow: 'BEAD Grants — Timeline, Allocations, Key Statistics,' updated 2025. https://broadbandnow.com/research/bead-grants

[12] NTIA / BroadbandUSA: 'Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program — Official Program Page,' accessed February 2026. https://broadbandusa.ntia.gov/funding-programs/broadband-equity-access-and-deployment-bead-program

[13] FCC (Official Release): 'FCC Reaffirms Decision to Reject Nearly $900 Million Subsidy to Starlink,' December 2023. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reaffirms-rejection-nearly-900-million-subsidy-starlink

[14] FCC Dissent (Commissioner Brendan Carr, FCC 23-105): Dissenting Statement on Starlink RDOF Denial, December 2023. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-105A2.pdf

[15] Broadband Breakfast: 'House Committee Probes Starlink RDOF Denial,' October 8, 2024. https://broadbandbreakfast.com/house-committee-probes-starlink-rdof-denial/

[16] PYMNTS / Reuters: 'FCC Chair Calls for More Competition to SpaceX's Starlink Network,' September 11, 2024. https://www.pymnts.com/cpi-posts/fcc-chair-calls-for-more-competition-to-spacexs-starlink-network/

[17] Coherent Market Insights: 'Satellite Internet Market Size, Share | Global Report [2034],' 2025. https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/industry-reports/satellite-internet-market

[18] MarketsandMarkets: 'LEO Satellite Internet Market Size, Share, Industry Report, 2025 to 2030,' 2025. https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/satellite-internet-market-139239513.html

[19] Princeton Legal Journal: 'Starlink Spectrum Wars: Examining the FCC's Role in Regulating the New Space Age,' August 3, 2025. https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/starlink-spectrum-wars-examining-the-fccs-role-in-regulating-the-new-space-age/

[20] NC Governor Josh Stein (Official Press Release): 'Governor Josh Stein Unlocks More Than $300 Million for Broadband Expansion Projects,' December 22, 2025. https://governor.nc.gov/news/press-releases/2025/12/22/governor-josh-stein-unlocks-more-300-million-broadband-expansion-projects

 

 

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Crystal Radio Sets: Simple but Difficult to Use

Crystal Radio Sets 

Crystal sets are wonderfully elegant in their simplicity — essentially passive receivers that pull energy directly from radio waves with no battery needed.

The basic principle

A crystal radio has just a few key components: an antenna, a tuning coil (inductor) with a variable capacitor, a crystal detector, and high-impedance earphones. The antenna picks up a mix of all radio signals in the air, the LC (inductor-capacitor) tuning circuit selects one frequency, and the crystal detector rectifies the signal so you can hear the audio.

The tuning circuit

This is where your frustration likely came from. The coil and capacitor form a resonant circuit that peaks sharply at one frequency — f = 1/(2π√LC). You tune by either varying the capacitor (a rotary variable cap with interleaved plates) or by sliding a tap along the coil (a "slider" or "cat's whisker" on the coil wire). The circuit resonates most strongly at the station's carrier frequency and rejects others.

The problem is that early sets had poor selectivity — the resonant peak was too broad, meaning nearby stations bleed through. This was quantified as Q factor (quality factor). A high-Q circuit has a sharp, narrow peak; a low-Q circuit has a fat, sloppy one. Cheap wire, lossy coil forms, or the resistance of the antenna all loaded down the circuit and killed the Q.

The crystal detector

The "crystal" was typically galena (lead sulfide), though silicon and carborundum were also used. The cat's whisker — a fine wire probe — had to be pressed against a sensitive spot on the crystal surface to form a point-contact diode junction. This rectified the AM signal, stripping away the carrier and leaving just the audio envelope. Finding that sensitive spot was a constant, maddening exercise in patience, and vibration could knock it off.

Why tuning was so hard

Several factors conspired against you. If your antenna was long, it coupled so strongly to the tuning circuit that it broadened the resonance peak and made separation between stations poor. The solution was to use an antenna coupling coil rather than connecting directly. Also, the variable capacitors of the era were often coarse and difficult to set precisely. And if you were in a strong-signal area with multiple stations close in frequency, even a well-built set struggled.

Interestingly, some of the best crystal set builders became obsessed with maximizing Q — using silver-wound coils, low-loss coil forms like polystyrene or ceramic, precision air-variable capacitors, and carefully optimized antenna coupling — and could achieve remarkable selectivity. But for the typical home-built or mass-market set, it was always a compromise.

GE, Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney: Who Rules the Engine Market? - YouTube

GE, Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney: Who Rules the Engine Market? - YouTube

Power Struggle at Altitude: The Commercial Aircraft Engine Market in 2026

Special Analysis

February 18, 2026

With record airline demand outpacing constrained airframe production, and propulsion technology entering its most competitive era in decades, the Big Three engine makers face simultaneous crises of supply, reliability, and the race to define the next generation of narrowbody propulsion.

 

BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front

The global commercial aircraft engine market — valued at roughly $61–81 billion in 2024 depending on scope — is experiencing its most structurally disruptive period since the post-9/11 retrenchment. GE Aerospace and its CFM joint venture with Safran dominate with approximately 55% of the overall market and claim to power three in four commercial flights worldwide. Pratt & Whitney's Geared Turbofan (GTF) program has reshaped narrowbody propulsion efficiency while simultaneously generating an ongoing crisis — more than 835 aircraft sat grounded at end-October 2025 due to contaminated powder metal in engine disks, a remediation now estimated to cost RTX $6–7 billion through at least 2026. Rolls-Royce, long absent from the narrowbody market, is aggressively positioning its UltraFan and UltraFan 30 technologies for a return to single-aisle competition in the 2030s. Meanwhile, both Boeing and Airbus carry backlogs representing 11+ years of production while failing to meet current-year delivery targets, anchoring insatiable airline demand against an immovable supply chain. The next-generation engine competition — CFM's open-fan RISE program, P&W's next-generation GTF, and Rolls-Royce's UltraFan 30 — will determine which OEMs define the successor to today's narrowbody fleets, the largest commercial aviation prize available.

 

Market Structure: The Big Three — And the Joint Ventures That Complicate the Count

Four corporate entities — GE Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney (a division of RTX Corporation), Rolls-Royce, and Safran — collectively hold approximately 97% of the commercial aero-engine market. Yet the picture is more complex than any simple ranking reveals. CFM International, the 50-50 joint venture between GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines, is the single largest engine supplier by volume, commanding roughly 39% of the global market and more than 60% of the narrowbody segment alone. When CFM's output is consolidated with GE Aerospace's own widebody programs, the GE/Safran axis claims roughly 55% of all commercial engines — a dominant position unmatched since the jet age began.

Pratt & Whitney ranks second by volume with a market share of approximately 26–35% depending on the measurement year, driven almost entirely by its PW1000G Geared Turbofan (GTF) family. The company boasts over 12,000 orders for the GTF across 90-plus operators worldwide and generated revenues exceeding $28 billion in 2024, returning to profitability after a full-year loss in 2023 driven by the powder-metal contamination crisis detailed below. Rolls-Royce sits third with roughly 18% of the overall market, but controls approximately one-third of the global widebody fleet and holds 46% of the widebody order backlog — numbers that reflect its strategic withdrawal from narrowbody competition in 2012 when it sold its stake in International Aero Engines (IAE).

The global commercial aircraft engine market was valued at approximately $60.77 billion in 2024 by Mordor Intelligence, with turbofan engines constituting over 99% of commercial sales. Market research firm Global Market Insights placed the total broader aviation engine market — including aftermarket and overhaul — at over $81 billion in 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 9%, projected to exceed $184 billion by 2034. The aftermarket segment — long-term service agreements, spare parts, and MRO — has become the critical battleground for profitability; GE Aerospace raised its 2025 profit forecast specifically citing aftermarket strength.

 

Demand Signal: Airlines Flying Full, Fleets Aging, Backlogs Swelling

The demand environment for new engines and new aircraft has never been stronger in aggregate, even if the structural bottlenecks preventing supply from meeting that demand have never been more entrenched. IATA's 2025 full-year data, released in February 2026, showed global revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs) rose 5.3% year-over-year, with the overall passenger load factor hitting a record 83.6%. Airlines filled seats at historically unprecedented rates — a direct consequence of aircraft delivery delays forcing carriers to squeeze more utilization out of existing fleets rather than adding new capacity.

IATA projects global airline net profits will reach a record $41 billion in 2026, up from $39.5 billion in 2025, on revenues approaching $1.053 trillion — the first time the industry has crossed the trillion-dollar threshold. Passenger numbers in 2026 are projected to reach 5.2 billion, while load factors are expected to hit yet another record of 83.8%. Despite these headline numbers, net margins remain razor-thin at 3.9%, well below the industry's weighted average cost of capital of 8.2%. IATA Director General Willie Walsh noted bluntly that the aircraft order backlog has exceeded 17,000 planes — equivalent to roughly 60% of the active global fleet — and that supply chain failures cost airlines more than $11 billion in 2025 alone.

The implication for engine makers is straightforward: virtually every new aircraft delivered triggers new engine revenue and initiates a multi-decade aftermarket relationship. The constraint is not demand — it is the ability of the propulsion and airframe supply chains to convert backlog into delivery.

 

Airframe OEM Status: Delivery Shortfalls Cascade Into Engine Programs

The two dominant commercial airframe manufacturers — Airbus and Boeing — entered 2026 with combined backlogs representing more than a decade of production at current rates, yet neither is delivering at a pace sufficient to satisfy the market.

Airbus held a backlog of 8,695 aircraft as of end-November 2025, with approximately 89% concentrated in A220 and A320neo family narrowbodies. The company delivered 657 aircraft through November 2025 and revised its full-year 2025 target down from 820 to approximately 790 units after persistent shortages of Buyer Furnished Equipment and engines forced the revision. A350 production averaged only 4.5 aircraft per month through most of 2025 against a target of six — a shortfall compounded by Spirit AeroSystems supply chain disruptions. The A220 program has been particularly troubled; roughly one-quarter of the global A220 fleet has been parked due to PW1500G GTF recall requirements, undermining order confidence and forcing Airbus to cut its 2026 production rate target for the type from 14 to 12 aircraft per month.

Boeing's recovery has been more dramatic in percentage terms but from a far lower base. After a deeply troubled 2024 marked by a machinist strike and quality control crises, Boeing deliveries rose approximately 69% in 2025. The average time from first flight to customer delivery fell to 37 days from 47 in 2024, and the long-term backlog of aircraft delayed more than a year shrank to just 27 units. The FAA approved a rate increase for the 737 MAX from 38 to 42 aircraft per month, with aspirations to reach 50 per month by 2026. Boeing's own backlog stood at 6,609 aircraft at end-November 2025 — again representing approximately 11.5 years of production. The 777X program, which uses GE's GE9X engine, remains in pre-certification; first delivery to launch customer Lufthansa has now slipped from 2026 to 2027 due to ongoing FAA certification delays. GE has separately disclosed a durability issue with the GE9X for the 777-9, though both GE and Boeing maintain the problem will not affect the 2027 delivery target.

Brazilian manufacturer Embraer improved its E-Jet E2 delivery count to 66 aircraft in 2025 from 55 in 2024, though it also faces GTF-related headwinds through the PW1900G variant. COMAC, China's state-backed narrowbody manufacturer, delivered only 29 C919s in 2025, down from 40 in 2024, struggling to convert a large domestic backlog into active deliveries. The C919 uses CFM LEAP-1C engines under an existing contract; Chinese authorities are simultaneously investing heavily in the Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC) to develop indigenous propulsion for future generations, a program that remains years from commercial viability.

 

The GTF Crisis: Pratt & Whitney's Powder Metal Wound

The most significant single disruption in commercial propulsion in the last decade is the ongoing recall of Pratt & Whitney's PW1000G Geared Turbofan family. RTX disclosed in July 2023 that a rare condition in the powder metal material used to manufacture certain high-pressure turbine and compressor disks had been introduced during production of engines built between October 2015 and September 2021. The contaminated metal can cause premature microstructural cracks that could ultimately lead to an uncontained disk failure — one of the most consequential failure modes in commercial aviation.

The remediation has proved far more protracted than initially projected. Turnaround times at MRO facilities stretched to 250–300 days rather than the originally estimated 60 days, driven by shop capacity limitations, parts shortages, and the specialized inspection tooling required. What began as an estimated 600–700 engines requiring accelerated shop visits expanded to nearly 3,000 affected engines across the PW1100G (A320neo family), PW1500G (A220), and PW1900G (Embraer E2) variants.

By end-October 2025, according to fleet data provider Cirium, 835 jets powered by GTF engines were in storage — a storage rate of approximately 33% of the total GTF-powered fleet. By comparison, only 155 aircraft powered by CFM's competing LEAP turbofans were stored at the same time, representing just 3.5% of that fleet. The competitive damage to Pratt & Whitney's brand has been significant, even as airlines continue ordering GTFs in large numbers — P&W recorded more than 1,100 engine orders in the first half of 2025 alone.

RTX's total financial exposure from the recall is estimated at $6–7 billion for RTX and its GTF risk-sharing partners combined. The company took a $3 billion charge in September 2023 and an additional $5.4 billion hit across related periods. An FAA airworthiness directive published in mid-2025 expanded the scope of mandatory inspections, and a parallel issue affecting powder metal in PW2000 engines used on the Boeing 757 was also identified, though without the operational grounding implications of the GTF situation.

RTX's remediation strategy centers on two parallel tracks: expanding MRO shop throughput — maintenance capacity jumped 35% year-on-year in early 2025 — and introducing the GTF Hot Section Plus (HS+) retrofit package, which incorporates approximately 35 redesigned components and is intended to double time-on-wing for engines receiving the upgrade. The normalization of AOG (aircraft-on-ground) figures is not expected until late 2026 at the earliest for most variants, and not until 2028 for some E-Jet E2 operators.

The FAA separately expanded mandatory inspections of CFM LEAP-1A high-pressure turbine blades to engines operating in South Asia in 2025, following earlier concerns about dust-related blade cracking in Middle East operations. CFM has been working through a series of durability fixes, including deploying more than 1,450 improved HP turbine blades for the LEAP-1A and installing a reverse-bleed system on 50% of the fleet. Certification of corresponding fixes for the LEAP-1B is expected in the first half of 2026.

 

Technology Race: Geared Turbofan, Open Fan, and the Battle for the Next Single-Aisle

While the GTF crisis dominates near-term headlines, the propulsion industry's strategic horizon is defined by the race to power what will almost certainly be the most commercially lucrative single aircraft program since the original A320: the successor to the A320neo/737 MAX generation, broadly called the Next Generation Single Aisle (NGSA). Both Airbus and Boeing have signaled entry-into-service targets in the latter half of the 2030s, with Airbus moving somewhat faster in its public planning. The engine decision for the NGSA will likely be made before the end of this decade, and the stakes for each propulsion OEM are enormous.

CFM RISE: Open Fan Architecture

CFM International's Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines (RISE) program represents the most radical departure from current turbofan architecture under serious development. Unveiled in 2021 and now involving more than 2,000 CFM engineers globally, RISE centers on an Open Fan (unducted) architecture that would take the bypass ratio from the current LEAP's approximately 11:1 to 60:1 — a figure that GE Aerospace Senior VP and Chief Technology Officer Mohamed Ali described as the fundamental 'fuel burn opportunity' at a 2025 Airbus technology summit.

The physics are compelling: conventional turbofan ducts grow so large in pursuit of higher bypass ratios that the aerodynamic drag of the duct eventually cancels the efficiency gain from a larger fan. The Open Fan eliminates the duct entirely, enabling a single-stage rotor followed by non-rotating stator vanes, both with variable pitch control. CFM projects a 20% reduction in fuel consumption and carbon emissions compared with the current LEAP-1A — roughly double the improvement the LEAP achieved over the CFM56 it replaced.

CFM has completed more than 350 component and module tests across multiple demonstrators, including more than 200 hours of wind tunnel testing at France's ONERA aerospace research center using a 1:5 scale model. GE Aerospace completed a high-speed low-pressure turbine mating test in June 2023 and completed endurance tests on HP turbine airfoil technologies in 2024, simulating more than 3,000 takeoff and climb cycles. A full-scale ground demonstrator paired with an Open Fan set and a GE Passport gas generator is in development, with flight testing aboard an Airbus A380 testbed planned before the end of the decade.

The competitive landscape for the NGSA is, however, more complicated than CFM's technical trajectory might suggest. Safran CEO Olivier Andries confirmed in February 2026 that CFM is concurrently developing a conventional 'Advanced Ducted-Large' engine architecture as a contingency — described as getting 'prepared for any scenario.' The contingency reflects uncertainty about Boeing's appetite for open-fan integration risk: Boeing is understood to be significantly more cautious about the Open Fan's novel certification and maintenance challenges than Airbus, and the 737's architecture could make integration especially complex. CFM's target EIS for RISE-derived engines is the second half of the 2030s. CFM delivered 1,802 LEAP engines in 2025, an 18% increase over 2024, and projects a further 15% increase in 2026 to approximately 2,072 units — suggesting the near-term emphasis remains firmly on LEAP production ramp.

Pratt & Whitney: Next-Generation GTF

Pratt & Whitney is advancing a next-generation version of its Geared Turbofan architecture for NGSA competition, building on the PW1000G's proven planetary gearbox concept — which allows the fan to operate at approximately 3,000 RPM while the low-pressure turbine runs at 10,000 RPM. The company is partnered with NASA on the Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core (HyTEC) project under NASA's Sustainable Flight National Partnership, developing advanced combustors for small-core engines compatible with sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and demonstrating fuel/air mixer designs that optimize efficiency while minimizing NOx and noise emissions. P&W has also been selected for work on hybrid-electric systems for 30–50 seat aircraft, with entry into service anticipated around 2030.

With over 12,000 GTF orders already placed and a demonstrated — if troubled — track record in service, P&W enters the NGSA competition with the largest installed base of any next-generation narrowbody engine. The key question is whether the powder-metal crisis has durably damaged airline confidence in P&W's manufacturing quality control, or whether the GTF Advantage upgrade package and HS+ retrofit restore the program's reputation sufficiently to compete for the NGSA.

Rolls-Royce UltraFan: The Comeback Bid

Rolls-Royce has been absent from the narrowbody engine market since selling its IAE stake in 2012. Its return strategy is built around the UltraFan, an entirely new geared turbofan architecture — the company's first new architecture in 54 years — that completed its first demonstrator ground runs in May 2023 and reached maximum power in November 2023. The widebody-scale UltraFan 80 (producing thrust of approximately 85,000 lb) achieved a 10% efficiency improvement over the Trent XWB, itself already the most efficient large aero engine in commercial service. A second build of the UltraFan 80 is undergoing additional performance mapping, having completed its initial 70-hour test campaign.

More strategically significant is the UltraFan 30, a scaled-down narrowbody variant targeting approximately 30,000 lb of thrust and a fan diameter approaching 90 inches — roughly 10 inches more than the current PW1100G. The UltraFan 30 achieved preliminary design maturity by mid-2025 and is targeted for ground test by 2028, funded in part by the EU Clean Aviation UNIFIED program, which selected a Rolls-Royce-led consortium for a share of approximately €378 million in EU support across 12 projects. Flight tests of a narrowbody demonstrator are projected for the end of the decade, with the program pursuing Technology Readiness Level 5 by approximately 2029–2030.

Rolls-Royce CEO Tufan Erginbilgic confirmed in June 2025 at the Farnborough International Air Show that the company is in active partnership discussions with 'multiple parties' for the NGSA narrowbody push, acknowledging that industrializing the UltraFan 30 to the production volumes required for narrowbody competition — potentially thousands of engines per year — would be 'a massive challenge' without partners. The UltraFan architecture is designed to be 100% SAF-compatible from day one and scalable across a thrust range from approximately 25,000 to 110,000 lb, covering both narrowbody and widebody applications. The company's Trent XWB remains the exclusive powerplant for the Airbus A350, providing a stable widebody revenue base from which the NGSA bid can be pursued.

 

Sustainability, SAF, and the Regulatory Horizon

The transition to sustainable aviation fuels is simultaneously a commercial opportunity and a regulatory imperative for all propulsion OEMs. All major engine manufacturers have certified their production engines for 50% SAF blends, and the industry target — embedded in EU regulations — is full 100% SAF approval by 2030. IATA estimates SAF production doubled to approximately 2 million tonnes in 2025, yet that volume covers barely 0.7–0.8% of global airline fuel demand. IATA's Walsh has identified SAF availability — not price — as the primary obstacle to meeting emissions targets. Incremental airline spending on SAF is projected at $4.5 billion in 2026 for just 2.4 million tonnes.

The EU's CORSIA carbon offsetting program is projected to cost airlines $1.7 billion in 2026, with total incremental compliance and SAF costs reaching $4.5 billion — a figure that will only grow as mandates tighten. Engine makers are positioning their next-generation programs to be hydrogen-compatible in addition to SAF-compatible, though hydrogen's aviation timeline remains far beyond any currently committed program. Rolls-Royce has tested the UltraFan demonstrator on 100% SAF and is pursuing hydrogen combustion research with easyJet and NASA. CFM's RISE program is similarly designed for SAF and hybrid-electric compatibility from inception.

 

Competitive Dynamics and Market Outlook

The near-term competitive dynamic in commercial propulsion is, in essence, a two-horse race between CFM and Pratt & Whitney for narrowbody dominance, with Rolls-Royce competing exclusively in widebodies while building toward a potential narrowbody return. GE Aerospace's installed base of approximately 45,000 engines — including CFM programs — and its claim of powering three of every four commercial flights represent a structural advantage that will persist for decades regardless of NGSA outcomes. The aftermarket revenue stream from that installed base, growing in direct proportion to every engine delivered, is the financial foundation from which GE funds its next-generation development.

For Pratt & Whitney, the priority in 2026 remains operational: normalize the GTF grounding situation, rebuild airline confidence, and protect its substantial order book while advancing the next-generation GTF architecture. The company returned to profitability in 2024 and recorded strong order intake in 2025, suggesting that airlines — pressed for new aircraft by constrained supply — are not fundamentally changing their propulsion preferences based on the powder-metal crisis alone. But the competitive gap in fleet availability between GTF-powered and LEAP-powered A320neo variants, documented in real time by Cirium fleet data, has created a measurable reputational liability.

The NGSA engine decision — still years away — will be the most consequential commercial propulsion award since the CFM56 was selected for the original 737 Classic in the 1970s. The candidate technologies on offer are more radically differentiated from current engines than at any competitive transition in the jet age: an Open Fan with bypass ratios of 60:1, a next-generation geared turbofan building on a proven but troubled architecture, and a late-entry UltraFan 30 that must first prove industrial credibility. The choice will be driven as much by airframe integration risk, certification timelines, and production scalability as by thermodynamic efficiency — and the winner or winners will define commercial aviation propulsion through the 2060s.

The broader structural truth is this: with global airline backlogs exceeding 17,000 aircraft, IATA projecting record profits and record load factors, and both Airbus and Boeing unable to meet delivery targets despite sustained effort, the propulsion industry faces an extraordinary multi-decade demand signal. The question is not whether engines will be needed — they will be needed in historically unprecedented numbers — but which organizations will be positioned, technically and industrially, to supply them.

 

VERIFIED SOURCES AND FORMAL CITATIONS

All sources verified as of February 2026. URLs active at time of research.

 

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