The House Appropriations Committee (HAC)-passed fiscal year 2015 defense appropriations bill supports the Army aviation restructure initiative–to a point–and that point is: forget getting rid of any of the 182 TH-67 training aircraft in the Army inventory until a comprehensive report is submitted on the divestiture impact on the industrial base.
The Army’s plan to retire the current TH-67 Creek aircraft, produced by Bell Helicopter
[TXT] has left HAC “extremely concerned about the impact on the rotary wing industrial base of placing such a large amount of excess airframes on the market.”
Photo: U.S. Army
That led to the committee directing the Defense Secretary to submit a report to the congressional defense committees on the retirement of the training aircraft proposed by the Army’s “significant restructuring of the aviation branch.”
The report should include “the number of airframes being divested, the number of airframes being transferred to other government agencies, the number of airframes being offered for sale to other nations, the cost of divesting these aircraft, and the impact the divestiture of these airframes will have on the domestic rotary wing industrial base.”
A non-developmental item, the Creek is maintained to Federal Aviation Administration standards so it’s commercially resalable. The Army inventory requires 183 of the TH-67s.
Additionally, the Army Secretary “is prohibited from divesting any aircraft” until the report is submitted by the Secretary of Defense.
The HAC report would also stop the transfer of AH-64 Apache helicopters, produced by Boeing [BA], from the Army National Guard to the active force. Moving the Apaches, about 36 in total, has been controversial since the initiative was made public, prompting fierce public resistance from the Army National Guard, and on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.
The HAC bill now goes before the full House.