Shrinking defense budgets around the globe haven’t stopped Boeing’s CH-47 Chinook helicopter from having a big year.
The platform has been in use around the world for a long time, and with Boeing continually updating the platform, it remains an attractive buy on the international market in comparison to newer, more expensive rotorcraft — a trend that is likely to continue.
Its most recent run started in December 2013, when the Pentagon green-lit South Korea’s bid to purchase 14 CH-47D helos at a cost of $151 million. In August 2014, the Indian government authorized $2.5 billion for military hardware, which would include an unannounced number of Chinooks. Earlier this month, we reported that AgustaWestland had delivered the first two ICH-47F helos to the Italian army out of the 16 planned. Not long after, news dropped that the Brazilian army was interested in buying a “handful” of CH-47s.
So what’s driving the demand? The simple fact that the aircraft is widely used today, and countries favor replacing their aircraft with newer iterations released by Boeing, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group. Every time a new version of the Chinook is released, countries line up to replace their older models, and the CH-47F model “is no exception,” he said.
“It’s been that way since the Alpha [CH-47A], the Charlie, the Delta — half a century,” he said. “It’s pretty straightforward. A lot of them have the same requirement.”
Boeing can in all likelihood expect more orders in the near future. The United Arab Emirates, Canada, and a number of others are likely to pull the trigger. Essentially, any nation that owns the CH-47D is a likely buyer, Aboulafia said — a long list that includes U.S. allies on every inhabited continent.
The CH-47 is popular because it is an all-purpose heavy-lift helicopter that can handle the basic military need to lift a platoon. Its only conceivable competitor in that regard is the AgustaWestland AW101 helicopter. However, the AW101’s home countries are Britain and Italy, both of whom are Chinook customers.
Aboulafia said the Marine Corps’ CH-53K King Stallion could conceivably be used in that role, but “historically it’s sort of a niche machine.”
The upgrades the CH-47F has over the Delta version are basic, but critical. The Foxtrot has greater capacity, more range, a modernized avionics package, and more powerful engines, to name a few. Essentially, Boeing has focused on keeping a platform that has proven its worth updated for the modern era, banking on governments around the world eschewing buying a flashy, expensive platform and opting for the inexpensive tried-and-true option in a fiscally tight climate. So far, that strategy is working.
So how long could Chinook stick around? Aboulafia said the Army’s Joint Multi-Role helicopter competition on the horizon could force the Pentagon to decide on sticking with newer iterations of the Chinook or to go in a different direction, but that is many years down the road — and there’s always the possibility the CH-47 wins that battle as well.
“I tend to think they’ll do what they’ve always done: reinvent legacy platforms using the latest technology,” Aboulafia said, pointing to the Black Hawk and Apache programs as other examples.
As for the Pentagon, it plans to continue buying Chinooks throughout the Future Years Defense Plan, although after buying between 27 and 39 aircraft over the next three years, it will drop down to buying just two aircraft in fiscal 2018 and 12 the year after.
