This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.
The Pentagon attempted to force the U.S. Air Force to forego an open competition for the service’s $15 billion combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter replacement program and wanted the service to conduct a directed buy of Bell-Boeing CV-22s, Boeing MH-47s, Sikorsky MH-60s, or a mixed fleet of these types, Aerospace DAILY has learned.
A Defense Department study guidance and the supporting e-mail trail show that the department was pushing for sole-source procurement for the mixed CSAR-X replacement fleet as late as the fall of 2005 and well into 2006 — even though Air Force CSAR-X requirements ruled out MH-60s, and concerns over costs, downwash and sufficient weaponry dropped the CV-22 out of the running. This meant only one aircraft in the analysis would likely meet the Air Force requirements — the MH-47 Chinook.
A Chinook variant wound up winning the first go-around of the eventual CSAR-X competition in 2006, but that effort is now being rebid after multiple industry protests.
In a telephone interview with Aerospace DAILY, DOD acquisition chief John Young questioned the validity of the entire CSAR-X process prior to his 2007 appointment as acquisition chief, saying Air Force and even Pentagon officials failed to ask some of the most basic questions, including: should the service even have a dedicated CSAR force, and if so, what should the aircraft’s requirements truly be?
DOD has declined to comment about moves made before Young’s tenure.
The Air Force started looking for a CSAR helicopter replacement about a decade ago. The service said it needed a better-armed aircraft that was more agile, networked, powerful and modern to survive the high-threat missions it would perform.
After the service formed and vetted its requirements through the Pentagon process, the three remaining potential replacement helicopters were variants of the Boeing H-47, Lockheed US101 and Sikorsky S-92. The three prepared timely and expensive proposals for the program.
But service documents and related e-mails show the Pentagon was looking to bypass the required selection route. An Air Force briefing dated Sept. 26, 2005, about the Pentagon guidance says: “Selection of OSD-recommended mixed fleet solution would require sole-source acquisition strategy.“
The briefing also says the Pentagon’s plan would most certainly lead to protests, including by contractors like the Northrop Grumman-EADS team, which had pulled its NH-90 out of the running because of requirement issues.
“Any competitor that bids to CDD [capabilities development document] requirement but loses will claim that they would have won had they been allowed to bid less than CDD offering,” the briefing says.
Congressional staffers also have confirmed they pushed the Air Force toward a Chinook variant because lawmakers wanted an aircraft already in production.
The Pentagon interference set up a questionable parallel procurement track outside the one the service had already started with CSAR-X bidders, the e-mail trail and other documents show.
So concerned was Gen. T. Michael Moseley in March 2006 when he was Air Force chief of staff that he wrote to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he was “troubled” by all the “discussions” of a program “path” that has been twice approved by DOD’s Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC).
Young said he thought the JROC acted too hastily with its CSAR-X approvals, failing to ask the appropriate questions about the real need for a dedicated CSAR force and the true requirements for such aircraft.
Read the rest of this story, learn why the Euros are out of the Air Force One business, see the first shots fired since Gaza’s cease fire and get a glimpse of German defense from our friends at Aviation Week exclusively on Military.com.
– Christian
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
About the article on “why the Euros are out of the Air Force One business”:
If (and I quote)
“Buy America advocates hammered the Air Force last year after it awarded the KC-135 replacement deal to Northrop Grumman/EADS North America, which proposed a tanker based on the Airbus A330. That deal was scrapped after a protest from Boeing and findings from a government audit that the Air Force broke procurement guidelines. A new competition is expected.”
then I really don’t understand all of Airbus’ consideration (altruism?) now towards Boeing, concerning the three planes to transport future U.S. presidents (“Air Force One”), which is such a symbolic deal that it’s even worth to make a small loss in profit:
“Some industry officials suggest EADS may have opted not to compete to avoid another high-profile fight with Boeing on Capital Hill.”
NOT “another high-profile fight with Boeing”?? What the Hell is going on in the World Trade Organization right now, because of the subsidies dispute? If I had anything to say in Airbus, I would make life continuously miserable for Boeing in retaliation! I would speak exactly the same lousy-loser-language that Boeing always does, just to teach them to accept the results of fair competitions!
Been in CSAR for 7 years now and while the need for a specially equipped, high performance, heavily armed helo continues to exist for clandestine/overt/covert insertion and extraction, armed escort, and even wartime and peacetime medevac missions the era of the “text-book” HC-130 assisted long-range refueled deep insertion of PJ’s behind enemy lines is dead and has been since Vietnam.
There are no “lines” anymore. In the last two wars enemy and coalition troops are scattered throughout the battlefield, and as been proved in recent history, any aviator that ejects is most likely going to be picked up by PFC Jones in his uparmored Hummer before the JSOC even has a chance to wake up the General. There hasn’t been one, maybe two, true CSAR missions performed by us since 9/11.
Get rid of the hugely wasteful “Guardian Angels” program. Sell off the 40+ year old HC-130′s that are barely able to fly anymore, take the PJ’s out of CSAR and put them all into AFSOC for real SPECOPs mission that can utilize their abilities, and create a more flexible helo that can perform the gamut of missions that may come our way in the future.
Some may find this sacrilegious…
What if it’s time to hand the rotary-wing CSAR mission over to the Army? The 160th SOAR is quite capable of meeting expectations, and proven itself time & time again. Consolidation would remove mission overlap between services, and consolidate training, equipment, & personnel. This would also require an expansion of the 160th, or maybe a sister unit to be stood up. Though, I’m not sure who would gain CV-22 custody in the divorce proceedings.
“160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (United States)”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/160th_Special_Operations_Aviation_Regiment_(United_States)
Air Force Special Operations Command
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAFSOC”
@ freefallingbomb
You neglect to mention the serious vulnerability of the Hind’s tail pylon and rotor. Don’t you think that there is a reason that Russian forces have moved away from the Mi-24 to the Mi-28 and Ka-50?
Also, if you were a little more familiar with CSAR requirements and focused a little less on paper comparisons, you’d quickly understand just how completely inappropriate the Hind would be for a CSAR mission.
To the poster “C. Foskey”:
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You wrote: “You neglect to mention the serious vulnerability of the Hind’s tail pylon and rotor.”
I don’t know what’s the problem with the Hinds’ rotors, but the Hinds’ tails aren’t armoured, and I also read something about some accidents that happened when their long tails were bent upwards in flight (and / or their main rotors’ blades were flexed downwards) and the tail rotors and the main rotors intertwined, but these happened only in a few really extreme situations for which the Hind was clearly not designed as a helicopter (for example dog-fighting with light U.S. American helicopters along the former East German border, etc.). But PLEASE PLEASE , attempt to do all of the same with a Chinook, if you think that the twin-rotor, 22.680 kg heavy Chinooks are “more agile C.S.A.R. helicopters” than the single-rotor, 12.000 kg heavy Hinds!
But then again: The AH-64 Apache’s two engines are allegedly “completely armoured” too, and during the first days of warfare in Iraq one of them was shot down by a single AK-47 bullet in ONLY ONE of his engines!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2HXb8YVLsY
Answer that!
(Although I admit that the downed Apache which I saw on the TV news wasn’t exactly among the countless U.S. American helicopter wreckages which you can see here strewn around in this video, he fell into some sort of marshland, lying in the reeds, upright, even with a clean green fuselage. But with a tiny little hole in one of his engines. Any Hind would have been merely annoyed by the AK-47 gunfire and even pulverized the crazy shooter without changing its flight path!)
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You wrote: “…if you were a little more familiar with CSAR requirements…”
But why should I be “more familiar with C.S.A.R. requirements” if even top U.S. Air Force career officers aren’t familiar with these C.S.A.R. requirements? Seemingly, they don’t even ask for any C.S.A.R. requirements (because Boeing doesn’t) ! They probably don’t even know what the acronym “C.S.A.R.” stands for, thinking perhaps of some former Russian monarchs?
From the “Defensetech” article above, to which you’re responding to (have you even read it once, or do you only read my posts?) :
“In a telephone interview with Aerospace DAILY, DOD acquisition chief John Young questioned the validity of the entire CSAR-X process prior to his 2007 appointment as acquisition chief, saying Air Force and even Pentagon officials failed to ask some of the most basic questions, including: should the service even have a dedicated CSAR force, AND IF SO, WHAT SHOULD THE AIRCRAFT’S REQUIREMENTS TRULY BE?”
Don’t make me laugh, Bozo… But feel free to elaborate on these C.S.A.R. requirements yourself if you know them better than the U.S. Air Force!
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You wrote: “and focused a little less on paper comparisons, you’d quickly understand just how completely inappropriate the Hind would be for a CSAR mission.”
Evacuations of downed Soviet jet pilots in the Afghan mountains were relatively rare: Since the Soviet fixed-wing aircraft failed against the Mujahideen in the mountains, more or less like the carpet-bombing and cave-busting B-52′s have failed too, they were used in flat terrain instead, which in turn forced the increasing use of helicopters in the mountains. That’s why one doesn’t hear much about “lots of Soviet jet pilots who were downed by Taliban ground-to-air missile batteries”. Meaning that the Hinds rescued mainly helicopter crews, although the Soviet helicopter pilots sometimes preferred to shoot up their own buddies inside the wreckages as a true act of mercy when the area was simply too “hairy” to land. But the Soviets used Mil Mi-8 Hips as well as Mil Mi-24 Hinds (the Mil Mi-24 Hind is a derivative of the Mil Mi-8 Hip) for all sorts of missions in EXACTLY THE SAME mountains where the U.S. Air Force is flying now, and not just for ground attack and for troop transport, but also for reconnaissance, forward Artillery control, Logistics including mobile mountain Artillery, communications relay, supply and ‘command vehicles’ between 1979 and 1989. And according to some old books which I have the Hinds DID infiltrate and exfiltrate Army observers deep behind enemy lines under extremely difficult conditions which demanded a highly skilled pilot at the controls (for example on stormy mountain peaks that couldn’t be accessed by Talibans – neither by normal helicopters) and which they later discussed in some Soviet Armed Forces journals. Believe it or not.
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One shocking last thought:
Do you even have the faintest idea about how “incredibly many” helicopters the Soviets lost during their 10 years of warfare in Afghanistan? Let me open your eyes, hero: A lousy 329 helicopters! 127 helicopter gunships, 174 armed helicopter transports and 28 lift-ships (the Soviets deployed Mil Mi-24 Hinds, Mil Mi-8 Hips, Mil Mi-4 Hounds and Mil Mi-6 Hooks in Afghanistan). And the Mujahideen even needed 500 – 2.000 U.S. American man-portable “Stinger” ground-to-air missiles to achieve this “spectacular” number, supplied by the C.I.A. to their loyal station chief in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden himself! Now I challenge you to compare these laughably diminute losses with the losses of the 12.000 (I repeat: 1-2-.-0-0-0 !) helicopters which you U.S. Americans lost during 12 years of Vietnam War = during a similar time!
Who knows, perhaps you’re even right about the “inadequate” Hinds and about buying American…?
i wish you all would stop calling us “U.S Americans”. Its kind of annoying.
To the poster “Hibby”:
You wrote: “i wish you all would stop calling us ‘U.S Americans’. Its kind of annoying.”
1) Why, if that’s your correct name? At least since 1865, when the Union won over the Confederates?
2) What should we call you then? Note: The term “Americans” refers to ALL the inhabitants of the continent America, also known as the New World, although you U.S. Americans N-E-V-E-R respect this distinction, not even in the mass media and in official publications!
I also HAVE TO say “Red Chinese”, “Communist Chinese” or “continental / mainland Chinese” etc. every time when some Taiwanese Chinese appear in the topic, and “North Koreans” and “South Koreans”, etc. etc. etc….
3) Some of us posters here aren’t U.S. Americans. Not even Americans.
4) I’m respectless.
5) Have you ever thought about changing your country’s name? To some futuristic monosyllabic name perhaps?
Why are you invincible warriors of Hyper-Power Nr. 1, soon to be protected by unfailing “Active Protection Systems”, so sensitive about your… name?
Do you think that’s anti-Americanism? The common Taliban says “Americans”, your way!
“Posted by: Camp at January 29, 2009 02:02 PM
Some may find this sacrilegious…
What if it’s time to hand the rotary-wing CSAR mission over to the Army? The 160th SOAR is quite capable of meeting expectations, and proven itself time & time again. Consolidation would remove mission overlap between services, and consolidate training, equipment, & personnel. This would also require an expansion of the 160th, or maybe a sister unit to be stood up. Though, I’m not sure who would gain CV-22 custody in the divorce proceedings.”
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Your idea is not sacrilegious to me, but it may not be a complete thought either.
Sure, TF160 could conduct CSAR work, but they would need a lot MORE IRON to do this mission and their current workload, so flipping the mission over the fence doesn’t save a dime, it just changes the color of the acft and uniforms worn by the participants.
The second problem with the idea is that SOCOM doesn’t WANT to the CSAR mission, and didn’t want AFSOC doing it either, thus why the mission is back under ACC.
The third problem you might have is with “Roles and Missions” which are the sacred rice bowls all services guard closely and CSAR in it