Army Aviation Transformation On Or Ahead of Schedule, Officials Say

Defense Daily, Nov 16, 2006 by Ann Roosevelt

By Ann Roosevelt

Army aviation transformation is paying off in saving lives, new aircraft, aviation upgrades and safety equipment a three-year benchmark, officials say.

"We're ahead of schedule in many ways," Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody said responding to a question from Defense Daily at a recent briefing.

Program Executive Officer-Aviation Paul Bogosian said he was told to undertake seven major efforts and he'd have three years to get them under way and solidly executing.

"Every one has been done, with every single one executing," Bogosian said separately at a recent briefing.

The three years comes around in February 2007.

In 2004, the Army cancelled the potential $39 billion next-generation RAH-66 Comanche, a joint Boeing [BA]-Sikorsky [UTX] armed reconnaissance helicopter. Comanche was to replace the Kiowa Warrior helicopter. The helicopter was expected to be part of the Boeing-SAIC [SAI] -managed Future Combat Systems- -the Army's modernization plan (Defense Daily, Feb. 24, 2004).

The cancellation came in part because Comanche capabilities were no longer consistent with the expected future operational environment, in other words focused on Cold War scenarios rather than on 21st century realities.

With support from the Defense Department and Congress, the funds remained in Army aviation accounts.

In a now-familiar chart, the Army explained the trade: $14.6 billion over FY 2004-2011 for 121 Comanche aircraft, versus a plethora of programs, to include accelerating survivability equipment (ASE).

"The net result of this reallocation will be the new purchase, upgrade, recapitalization, or modernization of over 70 percent of the rotary winged fleet," the service said at the time.

Cody said, "First off, I think we're on schedule across the board."

What the service did was instead of paying for 121 Comanches, the Army decided to: buy an Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) that would be better than the Kiowa Warrior, field the upgraded Block III AH-64D Apache Longbow, buy UH-60M Black Hawks--1,218 or so, buy 323 Light Utility Helicopters (LUH), cascade Black Hawks to the National Guard as a replacement for aging UH-1s that will be retired, and buy the Future Cargo Aircraft to replace C-23-B and C-12 aircraft. The Army will also use some of those funds for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) such as the ERMP Warrior.

"We're fielding eight of them now and in Iraq and Afghanistan by end of year," Cody said.

"We're on contract for LUH, on contract for the ARH, the contract is signed for [Apache] Longbow Block III," he said. "We added 96 A models to be Longbows for the National Guard--that's a plus-up and we're in source selection now for the Future Cargo Aircraft/Joint Cargo Aircraft and then when that source selection is done ...we'll put that on contract," he added.

"All of the Comanche reinvestment we have held true to," he said. "What has not been helpful is we've taken some cuts from Congress in the LUH and ARH, because they thought our programs were too aggressive. And they're right. They are aggressive...and we expect to be aggressive."

In fact, Cody said, he journeyed to the Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] plant in early October to talk about the ARH. "We want the first unit equipped in '08 not '09. I'm confident Bell Textron will work very hard with the Army to make sure they do that.

Army leadership expects other programs to come out on time and on schedule. "It's all on track," Cody said.

The LUH rollout is expected next month. On Nov. 13, the Army ordered another 34 of the aircraft, for a current total of 42 on order of a potential 322 aircraft (Defense Daily, Nov. 13).

In June, the Army awarded the potential $2 billion program to a team led by European Aeronautic Defence & Space (EADS) North America, Sikorsky and Boeing (Defense Daily, July 5).

ARH completed its first flight in July, under a system development and demonstration contract with Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] (Defense Daily, Aug. 1, 2005).

In August, Sikorsky delivered the first new manufacture UH-60M Black Hawk (Defense Daily, Aug. 1). When Comanche was cancelled, the service said that would allow the program to be done five years faster. Some 1,200 or so will be built.

Work on Apache Block III is under way as part of a $619 million system development and demonstration contract signed by Boeing and the Army in July (Defense Daily, July 28).

In June, Boeing unveiled the first production of the advanced CH-47F Chinook helicopter. It was the first of an expected 452 new heavy transport helicopters (Defense Daily, June 15).

The Joint Cargo Aircraft, now an Army/Air Force program, is in source selection.

The Army and Air Force are conducting Early User Tests on competing aircraft. The C-27J team of L-3 Communications [LLL], Finmeccanica's Alenia North America, and Boeing is now being tested (Defense Daily, Nov. 8).

The competing team of Raytheon [RTN]-EADS Team JCA C-295 aircraft completed its tests early this month (Defense Daily, Nov. 2).