Army ASARC To Determine ARH Way Ahead In Mid-May

Defense Daily, April 26, 2007 by Ann Roosevelt

By Ann Roosevelt

The Army will decide next month how to move forward on its fledgling Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) following a high-level meeting between Army brass and industry officials and new plans to fix the program from prime contractor Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT].

On Monday, the CEOs of Textron, its subsidiary Bell Helicopter, the executive vice president of Textron, the executive vice president of Bell Helicopter and the Bell Helicopter Textron program manager (PM) met with the Army acquisition chief Claude Bolton, members of his staff, and representatives of the Program Executive Office (PEO) Aviation and the ARH program offices, an Army spokesman said.

The officials presented their plan to execute the ARH program in accordance with a March 22 Acquisition Decision Memorandum.

"The plan will be evaluated in detail by the PEO and PM," the spokesman said. "The [acquisition chief] will consider this plan and other potential ARH capability solutions before making a decision on the Army way ahead at a planned mid-May Army Systems Acquisition Review Council (ASARC)."

The Army is concerned about process issues leading to cost and schedule uncertainty (Defense Daily, March 22).

A Bell Helicopter Textron spokesman said that after the March memorandum, "We requested and were granted approval to continue work at our own risk, which we have been doing."

The initial ARH contract in 2005 was for 368 airframes and $3.6 billion, part of aviation transformation to replace the aging OH-58D Kiowa Warriors in the wake of the cancellation of the Comanche helicopter in 2004 (Defense Daily, Feb. 24, 2004). The service now wants 512 aircraft, totalling close to $4.7 billion.

The new ARH is essential to the Army, which wanted all the new helicopters fielded and the older OH-58Ds--also built by Bell--retired by 2015. Now, that milestone looks more like 2017, a service official said last month (Defense Daily, March 26).

[Copyright 2006 Access Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved.]

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