Roanoke-based Synchrony has been tapped by Rolls-Royce to supply parts for a new cruise-missile engine.

The 24-employee company won a $1.4 million contract to design and develop an electric starter-generator that will be part of the engine of RATTLRS (Revolutionary Approach to Time Critical Long Range Strike), a U.S. Navy-sponsored supersonic cruise missile under development by Lockheed Martin. Rolls-Royce is designing the engine.

Synchrony's product is designed to start that engine and then, once the engine has powered up, provide power for its electrical systems - computers and guidance, for example, according to Synchrony President Victor Iannello.

"It's exactly like a car," Iannello said, "except a car has a separate starter and alternator."

And a car isn't traveling at supersonic speeds; the RATTLRS is expected to hit Mach 4.

The power required to reach those speeds generates a tremendous amount of heat, which can wreak havoc on a typical engine, especially one based on lighter materials and sophisticated electronics.

A standard starter-generator combination is located outside an engine, adding complexity and, in the midst of all that heat, the potential for failure.

"Our generator," Iannello said, "was specifically designed to handle the very high speeds and very high temperatures that a generator would experience located right in the engine."

Synchrony has worked with Rolls-Royce in the past on a starter-generator for a larger engine. So when the British company became involved in the RATTLRS project, it looked to Roanoke for help.

"They came to us and said 'Do you think you guys can do this?'" Iannello said. "It's a much smaller generator than one we were doing for them previously and it runs at a much higher temperature. But based on technology we've been developing ... we felt that the temperature issues were manageable."

The contract is for Synchrony to provide prototypes for testing. If Lockheed - and thus Rolls-Royce - gets the go-ahead from the Navy to go into production, Synchrony could reap some high-priced benefits.