This article first appeared in Aviation Week.com.
The U.S. Air Force is still confident a design will be selected as planned this fall for the armed service’s controversial rescue helicopter replacement program, even though forthcoming draft findings of a Defense Department inspector general (IG) investigation could slow the process of announcing a winner.
Maj. Gen. Scott Gray, USAF director of acquisition for global reach programs, said he doesn’t expect the IG’s findings to impact the schedule of the contract award announcement. “We’ve heard nothing from the DOD IG that causes us concern,” he told Pentagon reporters.
Service officials are folding lessons from Government Accountability Office’s findings in the beleaguered aerial refueling tanker contest into future acquisition programs. In the case of CSAR-X, “we feel pretty confident that there was nothing…that needed to be fixed,” Gray said.
The new aircraft are needed to replace aging HH-60G Pave Hawks now in service. Gray says that as of 2006, 7 percent of the Pave Hawk fleet of 101 helicopters was past its service life of 7,000 hr. He projects that in 2015, 58 percent will exceed their service life.
Read more of this story, see if there will be more work on DDG-1000, take a treaty watch and a bit of ‘80s retro from our Aviation Week friends on Military.com.
– Christian
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Same old story. I fix trailers for the air force, and in about a year, 75% percemt will be past their 20 yr. service life. At least 50 trailers. New ones supposed to be coming, but I’ve heard they barely passed DoD IG and fail to meet op requirements and we’re not even gonna be able to use them. Way to go, USAF!
Same old story. I fix trailers for the air force, and in about a year, 75% percemt will be past their 20 yr. service life. At least 50 trailers. New ones supposed to be coming, but I’ve heard they barely passed DoD IG and fail to meet op requirements and we’re not even gonna be able to use them. Way to go, USAF!
The acquisition process has become so burdened with rules that three things happen: The standard of fairness is imposed to such an extent that the cost is inflated for the contractors to complete the bid process or someone on the inside slants the process to get it through quickly and then the loosers protest and it is tied up in review forever. Examples: Air Force Tanker, CSAR, Master-at-Arms training. The untilate loosers are the taxpayers.
The USAF procurement process should not take this long to swap out old aircrat. There are specific service lives for each airframe, but in almost every case since about the mid 1980s on, the Service Life Expectancy has been drastically exceeded to the point where military aircraft are fallnig apart in midair (F-15 incident in March I think…) and the tanker fleet has been in the air for almost the entire Cold War until today, and will likely be in the air until they are grounded because one of the KC-135Rs wings falls off in flight and strikes an F-22, cusing the loss of both the F-22 aircraft and pilot and the KC-135 aircaft and crew.
What happened to the old days when manufacturers like North American designed and built a prototype of the next-generation aircraft and eventual replacement to the F-84 before the F-84 even became official. I think it is time that aerospace companies stop thinking long term-one airframe and begin to develop replacements and complementary aircraft before the contract is even awarded. This would severly limit the costs of each project, keep the USAF technologically up-to-date, and keep aircraft from becoming so old that they overtake their SLE by 10+ years before their replacements are even competed. The USAF needs to have a proactive (look-what’s-coming) approach instead of a reactionary (uh-oh, another plane down) approach to the procurement process.
I am a West Virginia University Undergraduate student majoring on Engineering. My professor yesterday covered the proactive vs. reactive approaches to engineering and during that lecture, it dawned on me that the USAF was acting in reaction to a problem they knew was on the brink for over 40 years with the tanker deal.
LET’S GO MOUNTAINEERS!
Mountainer, these days fighters cost so much that the services can’t afford to field new ones every decade as in the old days. You can’t plan/design a replacement too early or the technology is obsolete by time of fielding. Industry will not build a new plane unless they know the requirements which can change over time…e.g. stealth,…and have an assured customer’s funding source. In the case of airlifters, the C-141 was replaced by an aircraft with twice the payload that could land on a shorter field. Thus requirements drove it to cost far more than the aircraft it replaced and the prospects for its replacement are thus decades away.
In the case of tankers, it makes sense to base them on commercial airliners. So by waiting you can field a new commercial model instead of an old one…unless its a KC-767.;) Also the KC-135R has an average fleet life of around 17,000 hours and a projected life of 39,000 hours which is still far less than many Boeing 707 airline birds had on them. Those birds aren’t likely to lose wings anytime soon. The F-15 fix cost half a million vs $160 million for a new F-22.
The CSAR contract has new versus improved competitors. So do you pick the well-proven model with newest technology inserted for less overall risk, or the all new model that may have teething problems. That is one dilemma facing the USAF. But the main one appears to be the politicizing of the process, and protests that occur after nearly every contract award. With fewer contracts spread further apart the stakes are far higher for industry teams that may not see another contract for a fighter or airlifter design for decades. These are new phenomena in the acquisition cycle that are slowing the process.