NEW YORK, Feb 23, 2026, 16:53 (ET) — After-hours
- GE Aerospace shares fell about 1.2% after the bell, pricing the stock around $339.
- The company said it won a $12.4 million U.S. Air Force award with Kratos to design a small jet engine for collaborative combat aircraft.
- Investors are watching tariff-driven volatility and GE Aerospace’s next earnings update on April 21.
GE Aerospace shares fell about 1.2% in after-hours trading on Monday, leaving the stock around $339, after the jet-engine maker announced a new U.S. Air Force contract with Kratos Defense & Security Solutions.
The award lands as markets swing on fresh U.S. trade uncertainty. Investors have been quick to fade good company news when the tape turns risk-off.
It also taps into a live theme for defense spending: cheaper, expendable systems that can be built in volume. The Air Force has been pushing for low-cost propulsion that can scale, not just bespoke engines built for a handful of aircraft.
GE Aerospace and Kratos said the Air Force awarded their team $12.4 million to complete the preliminary design of the GEK1500, a 1,500-pound-thrust engine aimed at small “Collaborative Combat Aircraft” — unmanned aircraft designed to fly alongside crewed fighters — with an option that could fund additional risk work and performance testing. Kratos Turbine Technologies President Stacey Rock said the program builds on the GEK800 effort, while GE Aerospace Edison Works Vice President and General Manager Steve “Doogie” Russell said altitude-testing lessons on GEK800 were feeding into GEK1500 to improve thrust, power generation and lifecycle cost. (GE Aerospace)
The broader mood was sour. Wall Street fell and gold rose as traders tried to map winners and losers from a new U.S. tariff regime, with the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all ending sharply lower, Reuters reported. Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, said investors were “giving up roughly half of Friday’s gain” after the tariff rate moved to 15%, “reminding us that uncertainty remains high.” (Reuters)
Kratos shares were down about 1.8% in late trading. Other aerospace names also traded lower, with RTX down about 1.4% and Boeing off roughly 0.7%.
For GE Aerospace, the defense headlines are supportive but small at this stage. The contract is for design work, and any move from drawings to production depends on follow-on funding and what the Air Force ultimately buys.
That is the risk. A program like this can stall, shrink, or shift specs, and “affordable mass” only matters if the Pentagon orders at scale and keeps ordering.
In the near term, traders are likely to focus less on a single defense award and more on whether tariffs and supply-chain churn start to show up in industrial margins, and whether the risk-off tone hangs into the next session.
The next hard date on the calendar is GE Aerospace’s first-quarter 2026 earnings webcast, scheduled for April 21. (GE Aerospace)
