Navy acquisition officials are in the process of nailing down the specifics of a new multiyear procurement plan for the service’s fleet of MH-60 rotorcraft, in the hopes of generating cost savings within the upcoming fiscal year 2012 budget proposal and beyond.
The plan will be to acquire 140 of the Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Sikorsky [UTX] -built MH-60Rs and 65 MH-60Ss in annual 24- and 18-aircraft block buys until the total quantities sought in the multiyear plan are reached, according to a company spokesperson. The first tranche of MH-60S and R buys in the multiyear are slated for FY ’12.
“That is just a piece of it,” the spokesperson said of the initial FY ’12 buy. “That is just how they decided to break it out, to keep production on pace. The Navy now is working through [the plan],” the spokesperson said.
However, the spokesperson did note that the specific quantities and acquisition timelines sought by the Navy for the MH-60 multiyear could change, noting that service officials “are just starting to flesh out kind of what they are going to do and [see] what budgets look like.”
But the base 24- and 18-aircraft block buys being discussed for the multiyear is “a good, stable pace [that] the Navy is working on,” the spokesperson said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates first discussed details of the multiyear plan during a Jan. 11 closed-door briefing about the upcoming defense budget proposal on Capitol Hill. Gates has recently touted the use of multiyear procurement plans as an effective cost-savings vehicle, as part of the department’s push to generate $100 billion in savings over the next five years (Defense Daily, Jan. 7).
Navy officials declined to comment on the specifics of the multiyear plan, except to note that the sea service was looking to leverage multiyear acquisition strategies to generate cost savings within the service’s procurement portfolio.
Even though details of the MH-60 procurement plan are still in flux, a recent slew of support contracts awarded by the Navy for the rotorcraft has set the stage for long-term buys of the aircraft under the multiyear procurement plan.
Those support contracts, awarded earlier this month, total roughly $360 million and cover everything from improved situational awareness and cockpit upgrades to integration of next-generation detection and discrimination technologies, for both the S and R models of the aircraft. (Defense Daily, Jan. 13)
The avionics upgrades for the R variant and cockpit upgrades for the S models included in the deals are specifically targeted for aircraft included in the initial 24- and 18- helicopter buy of the proposed multiyear.
Additionally, $72 million of the total $360 million in program contract awards will go toward long-lead items associated with the avionics and cockpit work for the helicopter.