Two more companies have announced their intent to seek a potential contract to build a replacement Air Force combat, search and rescue (CSAR) helicopter fleet.
Boeing [BA] and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) said last week that they have responded to a request for information (RFI) released in February by the Defense Department. During the Farnborough Airshow outside London, Boeing spokesman Conrad Chun said the company has sent information about its CH-47 Chinook and the V-22 Osprey with its partner Bell Helicopter, a subsidiary of Textron, Inc. [TXT]. And EADS North America chief executive Sean O’Keefe said the European conglomerate has pitched both its NH90 medium sized, twin-engine military helicopter and its EC 725 Super Cougar, a long-range tactical transport chopper.
On the sidelines of the show, David Haines, EADS vice president for rotorcraft programs, said in an interview with sister publication Defense Daily that the EC 725 is a particularly good fit for the high altitude/hot weather requirements the Air Force has been insistent upon since the start of operations in Afghanistan.
“The aircraft has deployed and operated in the high/hot environment of Afghanistan with the French special forces,” Haines said.
Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Sikorsky Aircraft, a division of United Technologies Corp. [UTX], earlier this month announced a teaming agreement for the competition (Defense Daily, July 16). The companies responded to the RFI with information about the UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter. They say the UH- 60 will be a good fit for the new, leaner set of requirements announced by the Pentagon earlier this year.
The Air Force earlier this year revived plans to purchase a new rescue helicopter, with its efforts now focused on procuring a far less costly platform than initially expected. Officials have said that the Pentagon leadership is now fully behind a plan to replace the Air Force’s aging Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates last year canceled the CSAR-X fleet replacement program and asked the Joint Staff to reexamine the requirement for a new platform.
The Pentagon in February issued an initial RFI to industry. The plan calls for a contract award in 2012. The Air Force wants eight new helicopters ready to deploy by late 2015, but the RFI indicates no timeline for replacing all of the approximately 100 HH-60Gs in the fleet.
A rescue variant of the Chinook was chosen by the Air Force for the CSAR-X contract award in 2006, but the Government Accountability Office found fault with the service’s evaluation methodology. Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky had also bid for the contract separately, Lockheed Martin in partnership at the time with AgustaWestland, a division of Italy’s Finmeccanica.
Industry sources say that, this time around, a CSAR contract is expected to be worth $10-15 billion–in contrast to the $35 billion deal that had been envisioned in the previous competition.
Air Force officials also said this year that they hope to have “high commonality” between their CSAR and Common Vertical Lift Support Platform (CVLSP) to save on development costs (Defense Daily, March 31).
The CVLSP helicopters perform missile field security missions and VIP transport in the Washington area. The CVLSP effort had been part of CSAR-X procurement. However, the service divided the efforts in 2005. Earlier this year, a top Air Force acquisition official indicated that recombining the two programs is still a possibility (Defense Daily, Feb. 24).
Spoor said the Lockheed Martin-Sikorsky teaming agreement would extend to CVLSP. He noted that the missions are clearly different and that the CVLSP offering could be a “slightly downgraded” CSAR capability.