The Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), formerly the Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine (AATE) program, is a United States Army project to develop a General Electric T700 replacement for the UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache, improving fuel consumption, power, durability and cost.

[1] In December 2006, the U.S. Army's Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) solicited proposals for the 3000 shp Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine (AATE) free-turbine turboshaft to replace the GE T700 that currently power the UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache rotorcraft, leveraging the DoD/NASA/DOE VAATE program.

[2] Refitting the existing fleet of twin-engine Black Hawks and Apaches would require a total of 6,215 engines, including spares.

[4] Sikorsky is considering it for the single-turbine S-97 Raider instead of its single GE CT7/T700;[5] in addition, AATE could also power the Joint Multi-Role (JMR) helicopter.

[12][13][14] On 1 February 2019, the US Army selected the GE T901 as the winner of the ITEP program, awarding the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) contract for $517 million.

Both are free-turbine turboshafts, where an independent turbine is used in the exhaust stream downstream of the gas generator to extract power.

[24] In 2016, the Army awarded GE Aviation a 24-month contract for the T901 preliminary design review, and the prototype six month testing was completed in October 2017.