It’s been good news and bad news lately for the CH-53K program.
Manufacturer Sikorsky announced last month that it had conducted ground testing of the engines for the CH-53K. The next step will be to add seven rotor bladers and four tail rotor blades for evaluation before flight tests, which will involve four aircraft, we reported Feb. 10.
But the program got some unwelcome news with the arrival of the fiscal 2015 budget request, which pushed buys of the aircraft a year to the right as funds become increasingly scarce. The program had intended to start buying aircraft next year beginning with two CH-53Ks, before ramping up to four in fiscal 2017 and seven in 2018. Now the buys will begin in fiscal 2017 according to the new plan.
Rear Adm. Bill Lescher, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, said March 4 at the budget rollout briefing that the CH-53K had been “rephased due to affordability to a path that puts it on a track for milestone Charlie in the third quarter of FY-16.
While he called the CH-53K is “imperative” for the Marine Corps, it had to be one of many programs to face the reality of the current budget climate.
“Fiscal reality is a hard thing, and so, as we’ve balanced again, made some hard choices, the 53K was seen as one where we could slide that a year based on the existing inventory and stil get to where we need it to go with recapitalizing that part of the Marine expeditionary unit,” Lescher said.
The move comes less than three years after a top Marine Corps official said the service had moved the initial operational capability of the aircraft to 2018, and it could slip into fiscal 2019. Lescher did not give a new IOC for the program, but his remarks seem to suggest that date will also slide a year.
Despite the setback, Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group, said the program is tracking quite well now that it is made its way through some early issues.
“They had some initial up-front problems because they were trying to achieve the impossible — twice the range at half the cost, a whole bunch of impossibilities,” Aboulafia said.
The program may continue to struggle with funding, because it competes with the V-22 for scarce resources, a reality that Aboulafia said was “ironic” in that the need for CH-53K’s heavy-lift capabilities has been exacerbated by the V-22, which provides plenty of range and speed but not much lift.
The Marines have a well-established need for a new heavy-lift platform, which means the program is safe from deep cuts. But a delay is somewhat worrisome for the Marines, as the service is experiencing a shortage in heavy-lift helicopters and is having to make do with legacy CH-53s that are decades old, in some cases.
“They had to take a couple of Echoes (CH-53Es) that were in storage and rehab them because of the problem,” Aboulafia said. “And the Marines are doing so much work in Iraq and Afghanistan that you’re going to have problems, especially since so much has been shifted over to V-22.”
The main question moving forward is how long it will have to compete with other Marine Corps programs. Fortunately, Aboulafia pointed out, several programs are winding down, especially the V-22 and the H-1 series of light helicopters, leaving only the F-35B with the bulk of its buys yet to come.