By Geoff Fein

Boeing [BA] is securing the rights to produce Finmeccanica’s AgustaWestland AW101 medium-lift helicopter in the United States, giving the Chicago-based company a third option for the Navy’s planned revamped presidential helicopter effort.

AgustaWestland had previously been teamed with Lockheed Martin [LMT] on the now defunct VH-71 Marine One program. That effort used AgustaWestland’s airframe and Lockheed Martin’s mission systems.

Since then, Lockheed Martin has teamed up with Sikorsky [UTX], basing the new effort on its H-92 airframe.

Besides its plan to pitch the AW101, Boeing is also looking to submit the CH-47 Chinook and a variant of the V-22 Osprey that it builds with Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] (Defense Daily, April 21).

Once Lockheed Martin and AgustaWestland parted ways, the Italian-based defense company had to find another U.S. firm to team with to remain in the presidential helicopter game.

Yesterday, Boeing officials said the pairing made sense.

“Both companies feel it is the right way to go from a strategic perspective for both of us,” Phil Dunford, vice president and general manager for Boeing Rotorcraft Systems, told reporters during a conference call.

Dunford said Boeing will submit a response to the Navy’s request for information on June 18, based on the AW101.

While some might see the irony in Boeing teaming with a foreign defense company after the fierce battle for the Air Force tanker competition, Dunford said there are no similarities between the two efforts.

Under terms of the licensing agreement with AgustaWestland, Boeing will get full design authority, full intellectual property rights, and full data and production rights, Dunford noted.

“This will be a Boeing-built airplane,” he said.

However, he acknowledged there will be a balance of components produced for the aircraft both inside and outside the United States. “The goal is to build as much of it as we can inside the Boeing.”

One of the things the company wants to provide for the Navy is the ability to come to Boeing as a one-stop shop for answers to question on both the technical and build side of the airplane, Dunford said. “We have the capability here in country to answer those questions.”

A lot of AW101 is already built in the United States, he added. “As we go forward, we will be working with AgustaWestland and Boeing as to where and what ratios of work we will bring into the company.”

But there are still components built in Europe, Dunford noted.

“I would imagine there will be existing 101 supply chains that we will use. The amount of those has yet to be decided,” he said. “As we go forward [we] will try to use the extensive Boeing network to try to either supplement or improve that supply chain.”

Both companies currently have personnel in Italy working through what role AgustaWestland will have, Dunford said. “We will make those decisions as we get through the process. There is no predetermined role.”

However, based on the fact that this is an airplane AgustaWestland has sold globally, they will be a significant part of the team going forward, Dunford added.

Once Boeing and AgustaWestland get past the June 18 RFI, the two companies will work together on a collaboration agreement and a licensing process, he said. That’s when the two sides will discuss how the work is divided, Dunford added.

Boeing, along with all the other competitors, are awaiting a release of the VXX analysis of alternatives (AoA) which could occur in August, he added.

“Until the AoA is produced, we are not going to know the way the customer will go,” Dunford said. “We will respond individually or with a mix depending on what the AoA says.”

The AoA will be followed by a request for proposals, possibly in 2011, he added.

Under the VH-71 presidential helicopter program, AgustaWestland had built nine airframes for the Increment I effort. Since 2009 when Defense Secretary Robert Gates terminated the program, those nine airframes have sat idle (Defense Daily, April 3, 2009).

Yesterday, Dunford said there have been questions about whether those airframes could be used.

“That is something the government is going to have to answer,” he said. “There is the potential for them to provide some advantage…some capability that already exists. We would have to look at that as we proceed through this whole process. We are going to have to look at that in terms of how the customer defines their usefulness.”