This week’s deal to sell the Navy’s MH-60 helicopter to the Australian military could pave the way for future Foreign Military Sales (FMS) of the service’s premiere anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare rotorcraft, according to the top Navy officials overseeing the effort.
The Navy has already extended a formal proposal to Denmark for a future FMS of the Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Sikorsky [UTX]-built helicopter, H-60 Program Manager Capt. Dean Peters said in a briefing yesterday.
There is no indication on when Denmark may decide on a MH-60 buy, Peters said, adding that Navy officials do “not have a lot of insight” into that decisionmaking process.
Aside from Denmark’s interest, Peters said his shop has been pursuing “a pretty substantial campaign for several countries” including Qatar, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. On Saudi Arabia specifically, the Navy has provided “very good pricing information” on possible MH-60 procurement, as well as other platforms in the sea service’s fleet.
Riyadh is currently pursuing a multibillion effort to revamp its naval forces, known as the Saudi Naval Expansion Plan II (SNEP II).
Along with the MH-60, American defense contractors have also been pitching the Boeing [BA] P-8 Poseidon intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft, Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned drone. For their part, Lockheed Martin has also sent pricing and availability data on its Littoral Combat Ship to the Saudis, as part of the SNEP II proposal.
News of the possible Denmark deal comes as the Navy and Canberra came to terms on a letter of agreement (LOA) for the 24-plane sale of the MH-60 to the Australian Navy. The first two planes will be handed over to the Australians by fiscal year 2014, with the final tranche of the 24 helicopters arriving by FY ’18, according to Peters.
The Navy plans to procure roughly 300 of the R and S versions of the rotorcraft, with efforts to lock in a new multiyear buy for those Navy-centric helicopters in FY ’12.
Marking the first FMS for the MH-60 program, the Australian variants will have the same hardware configuration as their Navy counterparts to meet the delivery deadlines detailed in the LOA, Peters said.
However, the MH-60 program chief said that U.S. and Australian military officials were negotiating the details over “a few unique options” that the Australians would like to integrate into the new rotorcraft, via separate cooperative development agreements.
Those options include country-specific datalinks, navigation equipment, and shipboard landing systems, Peters said.
The LOA also coincides with major milestone deliveries of both S and R models of the helicopter from prime contractor Lockheed Martin to the Navy, Peters said, noting that this was “probably the right time to get our first foreign military sale” for the program.
When asked why it took so long to lock in an FMS for the MH-60, Peters explained that the program was not mature enough, noting that it would have been “premature” to entertain FMS options before the helicopter’s first operational deployment with the Navy.
But with three deployments now complete and supply and production lines proven solid, program officials could finally demonstrate the “type of stability [that] is very attractive to foreign customers” and pursue an FMS deal, Peters said.