GE was one of the largest suppliers of engines for military jets and the commercial airline industry. (The business remains the envy of the world. The division received orders for $26 billion worth of jet engines in 2021 and its backlog totaled $303 billion.) The directive to focus on the jet engine business was a natural extension of GE’s electrical-power-generation origins—a jet engine and a power turbine are more similar than you might think.
