In another curious case of industry timing, Boeing [BA] said on Apr. 29 that the U.S. Air Force had awarded the company a $178 million contract for seven MH-139 Grey Wolf helicopters for ICBM missile field protection to lift the total on contract to 26. A day later, an Air Force fiscal 2025 budget hearing before the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel (HAC-D) revealed that the MH-139, like the next generation Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM, has breached Nunn-McCurdy defense program cost provisions, first enacted in the fiscal 1983 defense authorization act. Law requires DoD to notify Congress of unit cost overruns of 15 percent and above in major defense acquisition programs.
In his opening statement at the Apr. 30 hearing, Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), the HAC-D chairman, told Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin that “we need assurance that your bet on modernization over sustainment will yield success, and, unfortunately, the track record is not encouraging so far.”
“Just last week, we were notified of a Nunn-McCurdy breach for the MH-139 Grey Wolf, ” Calvert said. “This follows the Sentinel’s Nunn-McCurdy breach. We need to understand the implications of both of these breach reviews for fiscal year 2025 and beyond.”
The Grey Wolf’s Nunn-McCurdy breach follows a decision in the Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget to reduce the planned buy of 80 MH-139s–six development and 74 production aircraft–to 42. The Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget requests $294 million is for eight MH-139s.
The first low-rate initial production (LRIP) MH-139 had its initial flight last December after final assembly at the Leonardo Helicopters plant in Philadelphia.
In March last year, after Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter approved MH-139 LRIP, the Air Force awarded Boeing a $285 million contract for the first 13 MH-139s.
The MH-139, which is to replace the UH-1N used in the ICBM fields, is based on Leonardo’s commercial AW139 helicopter.