By Emelie Rutherford
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday it is “worth pursuing” developing two versions of a replacement presidential helicopter, as lawmakers and a government-watchdog group called for salvaging some of the VH-71 program the Obama administration wants to ax.
House Appropriations Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.), Vice Chairman Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), and member Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) asked Gates during a budget hearing if any of the VH-71 presidential helicopters built for the first of two planned increments could be put to use by President Obama.
A Lockheed Martin [LMT]-Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT]-AgustaWestland team was nearing completion of the first nine VH-71s before the Navy, the service managing the effort, issued a stop-work order last Friday; four or five of those choppers were expected to go to the White House. Gates called for canceling the delayed and over-budget program last month, and Obama’s fiscal year 2010 budget request does not fund it.
“I think we have to relook at the first phase of it and I hope we can work together in some form to come up with a helicopter,” Murtha told Gates, citing estimates that it would cost more than $1 billion to end the VH-71 contract and extend the life of the current presidential helicopters.
“I wish you’d really look at the present money that we’ve spent to see if we can’t adapt something to that,” Murtha added.
The idea to field at least some of the increment 1 V-71s, instead of scrapping them, appears to be picking up steam. House Armed Services Air and Land Forces subcommittee Ranking Member Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), at a Wednesday hearing on Navy aircraft programs, suggested buying up to 19 VH-71s. And government watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste recommended yesterday that Congress move to keep the entire VH-71 program in place, citing the $3 billion-plus already invested in it along with additional costs for program termination and extending the life of the current fleet.
Gates, though, told the HAC-D if the Pentagon completed the increment 1 VH-71s, the aircraft would have a “relatively limited life span” that would be much shorter than the current fleet’s, and have “minimum capacity” to add capabilities.
Even if the Pentagon bought the increment 1 choppers, he added, a new presidential helicopter program would have to be initiated anyway to garner the more-advanced capabilities intended for the VH-71 increment 2 aircraft.
Completing the Lockheed Martin program through the second, more-advanced increment of helicopters would cost $13 billion–more than twice the initial estimate–and already is six years late, he said.
“This program is a poster child for an acquisition process gone seriously wrong,” Gates said.
It would cost $1.2 billion to terminate the VH-71 effort and extend the life of the current choppers for “another decade or more,” Gates said.
Hinchey called for continuing the VH-71 program, saying the Lockheed Martin aircraft would be superior to the existing helicopter manufactured decades ago, and could travel further. He said new information shows the structural integrity of the VH-71s are stronger than previously believed, and their service life is actually approximately 30 years–longer than previously assessed. And he noted five of the increment 1 aircraft are nearly complete with final testing.
“I would just ask you, deeply, if you would go back and take another look at the facts–particularly the information that has come out more recently on the strength, the solidity, the length of the life of these helicopters, and the ability for them to function effectively–go back and take another look at this,” Hinchey said.
Gates replied if VH-71’s increment 1 is continued it would be a $9.4 billion program, with $3.2 billion already spent. Obama “has a real problem” with spending $485 million for each helicopter, Gates said, which he said would be the cost of the increment 1 VH-71s if 23 are purchased. If the government bought and used just the first four or five increment 1 helicopters, he said, they would have a amortized cost of $1 billion each.
Gates said the increment 1 VH-71 has 55 percent of the range of the current helicopter and does not meet “a lot of the requirements in terms of other protections.”
In response to Hinchey’s concerns about the safety of the current presidential helicopters, Gates said there is “no question about the fact that the current helicopters the president is flying are safe and secure.” He said that while the existing choppers’ airframes may be up to 35 years old, most everything else on the aircraft has been replaced.
The defense secretary pledged to “immediately to sit down with the White House and look at the requirements and come up with a new program.”
Gates said it is “worth pursing” the idea of developing two different presidential helicopters: “one that the president basically uses here in town to go to Andrews (Air Force Base in Maryland) and on regular trips here in the United States and things like that, and an escape helicopter that has different kinds of capabilities and that could perhaps be a modified kind of helicopter that we use now in combat.”
Problems with the VH-71’s development and cost have been attributed to added requirements for the aircraft the executive branch sought after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“All of the requirements that are being placed on this helicopter may not be feasible in a single helicopter and maybe we look at one for escape and one for regular everyday use,” Gates said.
On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. George Trautman, the Marine Corps’ deputy commandant for aviation, spoke favorably about the VH-71 before the House Armed Services Seapower committee.
“I have flown both the VH-3D (one of two existing presidential helicopter variants) and the VH-71 increment 1 aircraft recently, and there is no doubt that the VH-71 increment 1 aircraft is a better aircraft than the VH-3,” Trautman told Bartlett. “The challenge, sir, is that the VH-71 increment 1 aircraft does not meet the requirements set out for us by the White House military office.”
Murtha called on Gates yesterday to control requirement requests from the Secret Service for the presidential helicopter.