The Army is aiming to ink a multiyear contract with Boeing [BA] for AH-64E Apaches and expects approval from Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in March 2016, program officials said on Monday.

But if budget instability persists and the current continuing resolution is extended to fund the rest of fiscal year 2016, it could throw a wrench into the service’s ability to sign or execute a multiyear contract as planned.

Col. Jeff Hager, Army project manager for Apache attack helicopters, said he was unsure what effect a long-term CR would have on the multiyear deal.

“It really depends on the rules that are levied down through PEO (program executive office) to the project office at the time, because they’re different every year,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t speculate on how long the CR will last.

The contract would cover production of 240 AH-64Es for the Army in fiscal years 2017 through 2021, and would contain options for foreign military sales. The Defense Department expects to save 10 percent through the multiyear when compared to single-year contracts, according to information from the Army’s program executive office for aviation.

Army Secretary John McHugh gave the go ahead to continue pursuing a multiyear contract this summer, Hager said. Since then, Boeing has submitted its proposal to the service, and the director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) is analyzing it.

The Army plans to obtain a total of 690 AH-64Es, a sum that includes remanufactured AH-64Ds and new aircraft from Boeing.

Starting in January, the company will begin producing AH-64Es with a package of hardware and software upgrades, including Link 16 connectivity that will allow pilots to share data with the other U.S. services and NATO. A second set of upgrades is slated to be inserted into production in January 2019, Hager said.

Boeing has delivered 217 “Echos,”including 87 for international customers, said Kim Smith, its vice president of attack helicopters. A roll-out of the first South Korean Apache is planned for November 2.

The company is in discussions with 10 countries–including current and new customers–about further sales of the AH-64E, said Mark Ballew, Boeing’s director of business development for attack helicopters . “We’re responding to written requests for four countries right now and are in conversations with the other ones.”

He estimated that those discussions will yield the sale or remanufacture of at least 75 AH-64Es, adding that “75 is actually probably a conservative number.”

Boeing in 2014 signed a letter of offer and acceptance with Qatar and is gauging whether to offer the Apache to Poland, which has a requirement for an armed reconnaissance aircraft, he said.

Sikorsky [UTX] has paused flight testing on its experimental coaxial-rotor S-97 Raider to focus on operation of its ground-test station.

The first S-97, which incorporates dual rotors and an aft pusher prop to achieve helicopter hover capabilities and fast flight like an airplane, has flown just 2.2 hours during two flights since its first flight in May.

The same aircraft has undergone 47 hours of tethered ground testing while the ground test station, which is a skeletonized terrestrial test bed for the aircraft’s main operational components, has undergone only about 40 hours of testing, said Bill Fell, Sikorsky’s chief test pilot on the program.

“Normally, you qualify all the systems on the aircraft with the ground test stand,” Fell said during a walk-around of the aircraft at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual exposition in Washington, D.C. “Now we have our ground test stand up and running and we have about 40 hours on it. Right now the aircraft is leading the ground test stand a little bit. So we’re going to take a small step back now to put a lot of hours on the ground test stand and make sure that we have the flight safety to continue to expand the envelope on the aircraft.”

Delaying aggressive flight test tracks with the program thusfar. Sikorsky several times delayed first flight of the aircraft because it chose to proceed deliberately with maturing a technology that could revolutionize rotorcraft but for which there is no existing military requirement.

The 11,500-pound S-97 is based on Sikorsky’s X-2 technology demonstrator. Both platforms were funded internally by the company based on anticipated requirements for improved rotorcraft performance.

The S-97 is designed as an armed scout helicopter, though the Army has scrapped plans to replace its aging OH-58D Kiowa Warrior fleet in favor of handing the scout mission to AH-64 Apache gunships teamed with unmanned aircraft.

Raider is the basis for Sikorsky and Boeing’s [BA] SB-1 Defiant, which is the team’s offering for the Army’s Joint Multi-Role technology demonstration (JMR) program. JRM-TD will inform the eventual Future Vertical Lift (FVL) family of rotorcraft that will replace the Army’s current fleet beginning with a medium-weight aircraft to fill the role currently performed by the UH-60 Black Hawk. It simultaneously is being offered for the light variant of FVL.

Bell Helicopter [TXT] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] are offering the V-280 Valor next-generation tiltrotor for JMR. The competition became somewhat muddied with the recent acquisition of Sikorsky by Lockheed Martin, effectively giving Lockheed Martin a hand in both of the two JMR offerings.

Mark Miller, Sikorsky’s Vice President of Research and Engineering, said the acquisition would cause “zero complications.” Lockheed Martin is providing avionics and other flight control systems for the aircraft.

“Lockheed is a large supplier to many programs,” he said. “That effort [JMR] will be firewalled from this program [Raider].”

The entire planned flight test program for Raider is between 110 and 120 hours, Fell said. After running the ground test stand for 200 hours, pilots will get “the green light to expand the aircraft’s envelope” and flight testing will resume, he said. Fell and other test pilots then will gradually widen the envelope and increase the speed of flight up to the expected 200-plus knots the aircraft is designed to fly.

“The plan is to have aircraft one up to its full speed envelope by next summer, but during flight testing you never know what kind of problems are going to come up,” Fell said.

The Army plans to release a request for proposals early next year for CH-47F Block 2, which will allow the service to operate the helicopter more affordably as it ages—an investment the service sees as critical, as it will be in the fleet until at least 2060.

The Block 2 changes “will let them buy back some performance, specifically payload,” Col. Rob Barrie, Army program manager for cargo helicopters, said Monday during a briefing at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting and symposium. Block 2 is not yet a program of record, but an advanced rotor blade made of composite materials, new drive train and new fuel cells will likely be introduced into the aircraft.

The service also wants to use it as an opportunity to make the conventional Army Chinook more common with the special operations variant, the CH-47G, he said.

Milestone B and a contract award—presumably to original equipment manufacturer Boeing [BA]—is scheduled for fiscal year 2017. After that, a four-year engineering and manufacturing development phase would begin, with low rate initial production set for 2021.

Block 2 preparations currently are funded through a budget line for engineering change proposals, which are relatively consistent year to year, Barrie said. However, budget instability, including sequestration or a longterm continuing resolution, could impact Block 2. “There may be challenges that we can’t see right now,” he said.

“The RFP release, we’re proceeding toward that. It’s in the very near future, and there are no plans to change that now,” he said. “That’s as good as the budget realities we have today. It will have to be reexamined if there are any changes, whether that’s sequestration or a CR.”

Instead of taking care of upgrades piecemeal through traditional engineering change proposals, the Army decided to group them together and do them along with planned recapitalization of older CH-47F models to save money, Barrie said.

Steve Parker, Boeing’s vice president of cargo helicopters, said the company had made “significant investments” in research and development funds to mature potential Block 2 technologies, such as developing a new type of steel, but he declined to specify the amount of the investment.

There have been more than 340 deliveries of CH-47 F model, Barrie said.

The company recently finalized a sale to India—the 16th Chinook customer— for 15 “F” models and is looking for additional international buyers for the aircraft, Parker said. He predicts Boeing could sell more than 150 helicopters to foreign customers between now and 2020. Production of the aircraft could extend “well into the 2030s.”

The current multiyear contract, which wraps up in 2017, contains 30 remaining options for foreign military sales, Barrie said. “I think it’s safe to say that we anticipate we will exhaust those those 30 options in the remaining two years of procurement that we have.”

Having inked a deal with India for dozens of AH-64 Apache attack and CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift utility helicopters, Boeing [BA] is confident that its military rotorcraft production lines will be able to rebound from a dip in orders caused by a downturn in U.S. military spending and continue churning out helicopters perhaps through 2030, according to Vice President for Vertical Lift David Koopersmith.

Boeing locked down a contract this week to sell India 22 Apaches and 15 Chinooks after at least six years of courting the nation’s defense ministry.

“That was a huge culmination of an incredible amount of work from the entire Boeing team,” Koopersmith told sister publication Defense Daily in an interview Friday. “These have been ongoing campaigns for us for I guess half a dozen years.

India will be the 19th international customer for the Chinook and 16th for the Apache.

Koopersmith chalked the contract awards up to hard work on Boeing’s part and the Indian Ministry of Defense working through budget troubles similar to those that have in recent years stalled U.S. military acquisition programs.

“We never fully understand how the critical mass has to occur in each country to get to a decision, but I can’t explain to you how we get to having an authorization or an appropriations bill pass in the U.S., either.”

With the awards, Boeing moves closer to Russia as a major arms supplier to India, and further solidifies the company’s position as the world’s largest aerospace firm. Parts for both the Apache and Chinooks will be built in India, which already builds aft pylons and cargo ramps for U.S. and other international Chinook customers, he said.

Final assembly, ramp testing and first flight will take place at Boeing’s U.S. manufacturing facilities, he said. Production of both Chinook and Apache is at relative ebb because of down U.S. deliveries associated with sequestration and other budget uncertainties, Koopersmith said.

“We continue to look at Indian suppliers because they bring very good capability, very good technology and strong value to our strategy  for providing world-class capability at the best value,” Koopersmith said.

Work on India’s aircraft will therefore be absorbed by existing excess production capacity, as was done with the V-22s that Japan ordered earlier this year, he said. Boeing also this year was awarded the contract to replace the Navy’s carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft, the C-2 Greyhound, with the V-22.

Given the scope of work Boeing has either won or anticipates to win in the near future, Koopersmith is confident that production lines for all four of its major rotorcraft programs–Chinook, Apache, V-22 and AH-6 Little Bird–will keep humming well into the 2020s.

“We just submitted a multi-year proposal to the U.S. Army for the Apache,” he said. “Now that we’ve won the COD for V-22 and with additional U.S. Marine Corps and potential other sales including Japan and other international customers…that will extend the production well into the 2020s.”

Boeing’s current multi-year CH-47F work including the India deal, U.S. Army and other international orders will keep that production line in business through 2019. “Stay tuned for additional news on this channel in the next few months as additional customers come on board.”

The company also is working with the Army and Special Operations Command (SOCOM)–which operates the highly specialized MH-47G version of the Chinook–to develop and provide Block 2 upgrades to the entire fleets of Chinooks.

Army Chinooks have a refit date with Boeing’s plant outside Philadelphia for Block 2 upgrades starting in 2018, when they will begin receiving upgrades to improve lift, speed and avionics. SOCOM will upgrade its MH-47Gs in parallel in an effort to achieve a fleet that is more common with the larger Army. A milestone B decision to begin engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) on Block 2 upgrades is expected in 2017, Koopersmith said.

“That would extend the current production of Chinook well into the 2020s, if not into the 2030s,” he said. “We’re at 2015 now. We will continue to build F-models for the U.S. Army and international customers…through at least 2019 until we feather in starting building the first of the Block 2 Chinooks for both the Army and Special Forces.”

Block 2 upgrades include advanced rotor blades that could add 1,500 to 1,800 pounds of lift to the aircraft without any other changes in configuration.

“What we’re really doing there is taking lessons learned from the echo-model Apache, where we did create a new 6-inch-longer, modern airfoil composite rotor blade that is now on the 200-plus echo model Apaches we’ve delivered,” he said. “It is providing the additional lift and other capabilities that we envisioned.”

Boeing is in the middle of building the first CH-47 advanced rotor blade, which should be complete in the next month, he said. Flight test will begin next year.

The National Defense Authorization Act, as agreed upon by both House and Senate armed service committees, would increase the Army’s combat vehicle procurement account by $400 million over the president’s fiscal year 2016 budget request.

The biggest winner was the Stryker wheeled combat vehicles, which got a $314 million boost in funding for lethality upgrades from an original request of $74 million. The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) was fully funded as requested.

In tracked vehicles, the NDAA would provide a $72 million increase for additional M88A2 Hercules recover vehicles and an additional $40 million increase to the $407 million program increase for M1 Abrams tanks.

Army aviation programs also would receive a significant funding increase under the current iteration of the bill. It fully funds AH-64 Apache helicopter Block 3A remanufacturing at $1.16 billion and adds $26 million in common missiles warning system survivability enhancements for the aircraft from $78 million to $104 million.

The MQ-1 Predator drone program also received a $17 million increase for upgrading the aircraft to the extended range version.

Negotiations settled on limiting transfers of Apaches from the Army National Guard to active- component units until June 30. Both chambers’ versions on the bill capped the transfers at the 48 already authorized in fiscal year 2015 until after the Feb. 1 publication of the report being authored by the National Commission on the Future of the Army.

The NDAA also would order Chief of the National Guard Bureau issue guidance regarding the fielding of upgraded  UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to the Army National Guard. The guidance must prioritize units with UH-60s that have the most flight hours and the highest annual usage rates. It also calls for a report on what would be necessary to replace all the National Guard’s UH-60A Black Hawks with UH-60L, M, and V models by fiscal year 2021.

Congress also wants a report outlining plans to replace the A/MH-6 mission enhanced little bird aircraft “to meet the rotary wing, light-attack, and reconnaissance requirements of Special Operations Command.”

The report should include an updated schedule for upgrades to the A/M-H6 Block 3 configuration showing operational life expectations and anticipated service life extension efforts, the NDAA states. Congress also wants to have a detailed description of SOCOM’s rotary wing requirements and platforms and whether platforms common to other services will suffice in the future and whether a commercially available platform could meet those requirements.

The 2016 NDAA funds the Army at an endstrength level of 475,000 active duty personnel. The Army National Guard would be funded at 342,000 soldiers and the Army Reserve at 198,000.

In what could not be confirmed as a program cancellation, the bill completely defunds the Army’s meager $5.4 million request to continue its search for a replacement for the Berretta M9 handgun because of schedule delays.

The State Department approved a possible $243 million Foreign Military Sale (FMS) request to Spain for four MQ-9 Block 5 Aircraft and associated equipment, parts, and logistical support.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified Congress of the potential sale on Oct. 5.

The requested FMS would include major defense equipment (MDE) of four MQ-9 Block 5 Remotely Piloted Aircraft; 20 Embedded Global Positioning System/Inertial Guidance Unit (EGI) (three per aircraft, and eight spares); two Mobile Ground Control Stations (MGCS); five Multi-Spectral Targeting Systems (MTS-B) (one per aircraft, one spare); and five Synthetic Aperture Radar, Lynx AN/APY-8 (one per aircraft, one spare). The MDE cost is $80 million.

The sale would also include a unique and common spares package, support equipment, United States Air Force (USAF) technical orders, country specific technical orders, contractor logistics support for two (or optional three) years, contractor provided aircraft components, spares, and accessories, personnel training, and other related elements of logistical and program support. These items combined with the MDE brings the total cost to $243 million.

The primary contractor would be General Atomics with other sole source requests identified in the Letter of Request as Raytheon [RTN] and L-3 Communications [LLL].

The purchaser requested offsets but any offset agreements are undetermined and would be defined in negotiations between the purchaser and contractor.

Spain would use this equipment for homeland security, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism activities, DSCA said in a statement.

The agency also highlighted how the MQ-9 capabilities would improve alliance capabilities and interoperability with the United States. “This proposed sale enhances the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capability of the Spanish military in support of national, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), United Nations, and other coalition operations.  Commonality of ISR capabilities increases interoperability between U.S. and Spanish forces and provides a common interface with other MQ-9 NATO operators, including the United Kingdom, France, and Italy,” DSCA said.

Implementation of the FMS may require multiple trips by U.S. contractor representatives to Spain and potentially deployed locations to provide initial launch, recovery, and maintenance support.