By Geoff Fein
As the Navy begins to introduce the MH-60 R and S helicopters into the fleet, the ability to achieve commonality as well as interoperability will be vital to keeping service life up and costs down, a Navy official said.
In January, for the first time, the Navy deployed two helicopter squadrons aboard an aircraft carrier. A squadron of MH-60Rs and a squadron of MH-60S deployed with the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), Capt. Dean Peters, H-60 program manager, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“Some of the 60Rs were on the combat elements within the Carrier Strike Group. But the CO of the 60R squadron and the CO of the 60S are both on the carrier now,” he said.
The MH-60R will replace both the SH-60B and F. The MH-60S replaces the CH-46, H-3, and HH-1N.
The MH-60R developed over 10 years, in parallel with the major upheaval in the computing industry, Peters said.
That parallel path led to a number of initial concepts for the 60R such as having a finer data backbone, he noted. Eventually, the Navy decided to go with a 1553 architecture with Ethernet interfaces and TCIP sockets. “So that it is flexible and it’s upgradeable.”
Besides the bus structure, one of the fundamental pieces of this is Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] single board processor, he added.
“They built it, but it is built mostly from commercial material. It is offered as a commercial product,” Peters said. “We have it in our mission computer, in our acoustics processor, in the console we are using for mine countermeasures, the audio management computer, our ESM (electronic support measures)…all use the same processor.”
The MH-60R is the Navy’s next-generation anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface warfare (ASuW) helicopter. Sikorsky [UTX] builds the air vehicle, while Lockheed Martin provides the platform’s mission systems (Defense Daily, April 5, 2006).
The MH-60S will operate from the Littoral Combat Ship and conduct mine countermeasure and anti-submarine warfare operations (Defense Daily, Aug. 26).
As the Navy continues to procure the MH-60R/S along with the avionics components, program officials will look at ways they can keep the single board processor up to date, as well as begin looking at what the next generation processor is going to look like, and if it will accommodate all the different software planned for the MH-60s, Peters said.
“We have two ACAT 1 programs that both have the same cockpit and we have been able to maintain a common software baseline between the two aircraft and that’s helped drive our cost down in terms of managing that configuration baseline,” he said. “It has also helped us when we want to upgrade equipment…if we do something for one platform, it’s done for the other platform also.
“I think that is a pretty innovative solution Lockheed Martin Owego came up with for this cockpit. It wasn’t always predetermined that the 60S would have the same cockpit as the R, but it just made sense in the development,” Peters added.
The Navy is now looking at the cost avoidance achieved through commonality between the MH-60 R and S, Peters said.
“ASN RDA…they want the programs that are always under constant scrutiny to start telling the stories about how we have helped save money in terms of total ownership cost. So we are just starting to look at those aspects,” he said.
Because the MH-60R and S have different missions, there are systems unique to each aircraft. For example, on the MH-60R, there is the need to interface with other platforms. That is being accomplished through the Ship Air Upgrade (SAU) 7000, Peters said. That effort was started jointly by the H-60 Multi-Mission Helicopter Program (PMA-299), and the Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS)
SAU 7000 provides a sea band data link for the MH-60R, the same data link was on the SH-60B, Peters said. “It ties all of the aircraft’s mission systems to the ship. They can take advantage of a lot of the acoustics and radar and processing.”
“SAU 7000 opens that up, expands the capability. DDG-1000 is really the first new ship class that has incorporated it. It is a government initiative that was developed in conjunction with Lockheed Martin Owego and Lockheed Martin Syracuse. It’s designed specifically for interoperability,” Peters said.
The MH-60R also has a unique acoustics processor that the MH-60S doesn’t need, Peters added.
But it is the commonality between the 60 Romeo and 60 Sierra that really stands out, he noted.
“From a hardware standpoint, having that distributed bus architecture allows you to plug and play those elements without sacrificing performance for either platform,” Peters said. “From a software standpoint, the software knows which aircraft it is in and it will only compile those modules that are associated with its mission. So we don’t have to worry about processor limitations, or things like that, because we are running too much software in the background…it only runs what it needs.”
The Navy is about half way through its deliveries of the planned 274 MH-60S helicopters. The Sierra went through an accelerated procurement schedule because the CH-46 was having engine problems, Peters said.
The MH-60R program is just getting started, he added. The Navy intends to build 300 MH-60 Rs. To date, just a little more than 30 have been delivered.
But once those two multi-mission helicopters begin rolling off the production line, keeping up with the pace of technology, change will be a “full time job,” Peters said.
“Obsolescence and component availability is one of the challenges associated with using commercial equipment and open architecture,” he said.
“We have put together an obsolescence plan. We have a road map that incorporates all of the known obsolescence issues. We work with our prime contractors to establish a pretty robust supply chain and we know pretty much at least a year ahead of time if something is no longer going to be produced so we can make end-of-life buys or we can choose when we are going to insert technology,” Peters said.
The Navy is buying the MH-60 R and S under multi-year contracts. Every five years when the service is coming up to re-establish the next multi-year, if program officials know there is technology that needs to be inserted, they can amortize that across the multi-year, Peters explained. “If you are buying aircraft on an annual basis you can’t do that.”
“Congress is very interested in justifying multi-year procurement and that’s one of the ways we can very easily establish why we need to do [it],” he added. “Once you have a stable design and a mature design and a contractor who has proven themselves, then I think you are more than justified in locking in those multi-year contracts just because it gives you so many advantages from a supply chain standpoint and the ability to amortize those costs.”