The Army wants to add another 114 Black Hawk utility helicopters to a five-year, $3.8 billion multi-year deal it signed with Sikorsky last month.
In a solicitation published July 19 on the government’s contracting website, the Army said it is studying the “feasibility” of a competitive acquisition of up to 114 UH/HH-60M Black Hawks over three years beginning in fiscal 2019.
Those aircraft would be in addition to a deal worth up to $5.2 billion the company signed with Sikorsky on June 30. That deal was to build 257 helicopters over five years for U.S. and foreign military sales customers. Sikorsky is a unit of Lockheed Martin [LMT].
Sikorsky will deliver its new UH-60M Black Hawk and HH-60M MEDEVAC helicopters under a $3.8 billion contract, with options for additional 103 aircraft adding potentially $1.4 billion more to the deal. The Pentagon will decide production quantities on a year-to-year basis with the first deliveries to begin in October and continue through 2022.
That contract is the ninth multi-year deal with Sikorsky for Black Hawks. Now the Army is seeking to increase the multi-year buy by nearly 50 percent.
The sources sought document says the Army is looking for “parties having an interest in and the resources capable of supporting the requirement for production and delivery” of Black Hawks for the Army and potential sales to other Department of Defense agencies, FMS customers and other government agencies.
Interested parties also would be on the hook for related support, services, systems/project management, publications, and technical data and must “demonstrate their capability to provide all personnel, materials, and supplies required.”
Because the government does not own the technical data packages to the UH/HH-60M helicopter configurations, including system/subsystems drawings, tooling drawings, software source code or models and simulations, companies other than Sikorsky – now owned by Lockheed Martin – would have to team with the original equipment manufacturer of the Black Hawk in order to submit a proposal.