By Emelie Rutherford
The future of the Army’s troubled Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) effort relies on Congress’ willingness to fund a revised program along with upgrades to the legacy OH-58 Kiowa Warrior fleet, a senior service official said last Friday.
Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Programs Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes said since the service canceled the over-budget ARH contract with Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] last October the Pentagon’s Joint Requirements Oversight Council has “affirm(ed) the criticality” for such a manned scout aircraft, which he said gave legitimacy to efforts to craft a new program and industry competition, now in the early stages.
But another key part to the Army’s new ARH strategy is modernizing aging legacy Kiowa Warriors, which total around 340, so they can be used during the delay with their replacements, Speakes said at the Associated of the United States Army (AUSA) aviation symposium in Arlington, Va.
This new two-pronged strategy “has the full attention of the Army leadership, and it’s up to us then to deliver the bacon,” he said.
“The pivotal choices right now reside with the Congress,” Speakes said. “What we essentially believe is that we need all of the money that was in the ARH (budget) line to go ahead and pursue what’s now a very sophisticated challenge of being able to sustain reliably our existing Kiowa Warrior fleet, figure out a way to convert some existing Alphas and Charlies (models) to make them into the KW that we have today deployed. And then we also have to be able to pursue the full program to develop the ARH, unfortunately, under a delayed timing.”
“So what we’re asking right now is that we get the full support for that money, because the requirement remains valid, the need is clear,” he added.
Speakes said Army officials will work with the Office of the Secretary of Defense over the next several months to craft an investment strategy.
Lt. Gen. Ross Thompson, military deputy to the Army’s top acquisition official, added: “We have talked both to OSD and the right committee staffers on the Hill to explain that (new) strategy.”
Thompson, who spoke alongside Speakes at the AUSA budget and program briefing, added the strategy also calls for acting “in the near term” to convert some of the Kiowa Warrior Alpha and Charlie models to Delta models.
“We’re doing the engineering analysis, the industrial base analysis, to make that happen,” Thompson said.
Thompson added there are lessons to be learned–regarding requirements, resources and acquisition–from the problems with the previous ARH program, which suffered a Nunn- McCurdy cost breach and contract cancelation.
“We’ll go to school on those lessons as we go forward here…taking a hard look at the requirement right now,” Thompson said. “There is a requirement for the reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition capability provided by an ARH, and we’re looking right now what those KPPs (Key Performance Parameters)…should be, looking at the technology that’s out there in the world today to be able to meet those capabilities. And so it’s a little partnership between the acquisition community and the requirements community to get that right.”