This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.
Stung by criticism in Washington over the VH-71 presidential helicopter program that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to scrap and reassess, AgustaWestland is firing back and arguing, essentially, that there is no reason to start all over.
Rather than junking the Increment 1 helos, which the Pentagon says only have 5–10 years of useful life and are therefore not worth fielding, AgustaWestland argues that the rotorcraft, with some certification activities, can be validated for at least 10,000 hours of useful life, not the 1,500 specified by the Navy. The baseline AW101 aircraft is already certified for that flight time.
Moreover, with about $3.3 billion already sunk into the program, AgustaWestland argues it can deliver 19 more Increment 1 variants for another $3.5 billion.
The total would roughly equal the original VH-71 program budget before costs more than doubled as requirements grew and the program raced ahead.
The helo maker further is floating the idea of building an upgraded version, a so-called Increment 1.5, which would be close to meeting the full program requirements but below the $13 billion price tag the program has now reached.
Meanwhile, AgustaWestland has delivered the fifth pilot-production VH-71 from its Yeovil, U.K., production facility.
Chief Executive Officer Giuseppe Orsi says that while program costs have doubled, the helicopter’s portion is only a comparatively modest 8 percent over plan and six months behind schedule, which he attributes to 50 major and 800 other design changes.
AgustaWestland on April 28 finished delivery of Increment 1, with the last of nine VH-71s now bound for completion with integrator Lockheed Martin.
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– Christian
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
maybe the USA should accept the fact thar right now european defense contractors offer some stuff with is better then what US companies are offering.
Take a look at SOCOM.
The VH-71 was disliked and sabotaged from day 1.
Get politics out of the way and give the grunts what they want.
50 major changes? Was this due to their stupidity or our governments?
And is it not bad enough that US companies are screwing us out of all our money, but we have to let foreign companies do it?
Now Sikorsky is going to have to lay off a thousand people so their CEO’s don’t miss a payment on their Bentley…..
Sorry, it is just getting a little old reading about these fiascos. I am actually getting angry.
Anyone with me?
This is yet another US Military abortion that attracts flys.
What in the hell else is new.?
The USA should be put into Hell. That is where it belongs.
The US military atracts flys.
So does the Oval office.
Yethe US Militaray spends a trillion dollars a year to attract flies which it can’t swat.
50 major changes???? What dorve those changes? Were they design deficiencies? If so terminate now….programs that suffer from these type deficiencies do not recover.
Jones, nice comments….when you come down from your crack binge let us know.
Have a nice day!
All design changes where not part of the orginal contract. Perfect example of NAVAIR Engineering running out of control. The said thing is not one NAVAIR person will loose their job.
In this case we can blame the government for the changes.
The Bush administration wanted to replace the Whitehouse helicopter fleet (Which is actually overdue to happen). Instead of just a straight up swap for a modern helicopter with the same capabilities as the old ones they wanted what was essentially the commo package in Airforce One on each bird. Then after they let the contract they wanted a BETTER package, and so on.
Other than the fact that the contractor was happy to assess the full ‘cost plus incentive fee’ for the changes, I don’t think you can really blame them for the mess.
Good Morning Folks,
All good arguments and observations on the Presidential helicopter, but I wonder what is not understood by President Obama;s very clear, at least to me I guess, statement, “The present helicopters are just fine.”
This is $13 billion that doesn’t need to be spent on fluff but could be better used buy the military for such items as a half dozen more Burkes? or five more Virginia Class submarines? or maybe 75 or 100 ( $3 billion left over) coastal patrol boats that the Navy desperately need to combat pyrates? or how about 65 more C-17′s
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Off topic – serious question: Why would companies bid on us military contracts knowing that there is a good chance the rug could be pulled out from underneath them?
Does the contract include “buy out” options so the contractor can recoup the cost of the bid and project costs up to the point of said rug being pulled?
I’ve worked on Federal responses in the past (BPA, USDA) and one was pretty certain that after contract awarding you didn’t have to worry about the “sorry but we want a do over”.
Jones do you have some disease that causes you to verbaly ejaculate all over forums for no reason?
Or are you just stupid?
Gotta agree with byeon and other posters that 13bil can be spent better elsewhere in more DDG’s subs an many other things.
Just but some black hawks? Why is that difficult or hell some osprey.
But wtf are we talking about all that money will go to wellfare or some other peice of shite program.