Pentagon Eyes Buying Fewer Lockheed Copters and More From Boeing
Pentagon Eyes Buying Fewer Lockheed Copters and More From Boeing
(Bloomberg) -- The Pentagon is assessing whether the Marine Corps should scale back its $31 billion program to buy new King Stallion helicopters from Lockheed Martin Corp. and opt for a combination with a modified version of the latest-model Chinooks built by rival Boeing Co.
Officials from the Pentagon’s acquisition, sustainment, research and operational test offices are evaluating and expanding on a preliminary review completed in May by the Pentagon’s independent cost assessment office at the urging of lawmakers.
They are “reviewing the operational suitability and cost effectiveness of a potential mix” of the helicopters “to perform the heavy lift mission,” John Whitley, acting director of the cost assessment office, wrote the congressional defense committees this month.
The results “will be available with the submission of the administration’s fiscal 2021 budget,” Whitley wrote in a letter obtained by Bloomberg News. Charts accompanying the letter said “analysis suggests a mix” of the two aircraft “could be more cost-effective and will be investigated.”
The combination assumes the Chinook, built for the Army, can be converted for the rugged, corrosive environment of aircraft carriers and amphibious warfare ships.
Lockheed Versus Boeing
A Pentagon decision to move toward a combination of the copters as soon as the fiscal 2021 budget would be a blow to Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed.
The Navy’s plans to buy 200 King Stallions were a prime motivation for Lockheed’s $9 billion acquisition of Sikorsky Aircraft from United Technologies Corp. in 2015. Twenty have been put on contract to date. The current budget plan calls for requesting 77 King Stallions, designated CH-53K, through 2024, including 14 in fiscal 2021, which would be five more than this year.
A mix would be a boon to Chicago-based Boeing, its Philadelphia plant and the 4,580 workers there. That’s especially true given that the Army has proposed halting procurement of 28 CH-47 Chinooks and shifting an estimated $962 million into a separate program.
The preliminary analysis “concluded that a pure fleet of marinized” Chinooks could save as much as 40% compared with a fleet composed entirely of King Stallions, Christopher Sherwood, a spokesman for the cost assessment office, said in a statement. But he said a fleet solely of Chinooks “cannot meet the mission set” for heavy lift needs.
The preliminary analysis examined expenditures across a 20-year life-cycle and considered acquisition costs, fuel usage, maintenance, and sustaining support costs, Sherwood said.
Based on the initial work, Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist directed a wider review that’s now underway into whether a mix or an all-King Stallion fleet “better balances” meeting the mission against cost effectiveness, according to the material sent to Congress. It said the study “will include reviewing the costs of training, simulators and maintenance.”
But the Marine Corps is signaling resistance to the mixed-fleet idea.
Lieutenant General Steven Rudder, the top Marine aviator, said in a statement that a mixed fleet “degrades capabilities by 40%, while only realizing a potential 10% cost savings over the aircraft life cycle.”
“Currently, such a mix does not meet Marine Corps heavy lift requirements as 94% of the vehicles” in a Marine Air Ground Task Force can’t “be lifted by the CH-47F,” Rudder said. “Another aircraft type increases costs to train, sustain, and base while challenging current manpower models,” Rudder said.
Bill Falk, the King Stallion program manager for Lockheed’s Sikorsky unit, said in an email that “a mixed fleet would not only decrease their combat capabilities but would increase the cost of training, maintenance, sustainment, manpower, and military construction.”
The Pentagon assessment was begun after an April 4 request from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe, who cited continuing technical problems and delays with the King Stallion program as the need to look at options.
Since then, the program has made progress fixing technical problems that have raised concerns. This week, the Navy announced Lockheed has solved a major flaw --- the problem of hot engine exhaust being sucked back into one of the aircraft’s three engines.
Both the King Stallion and the Chinook have boosters in Congress. The fiscal 2020 spending bill just completed by lawmakers adds $28 million as a down payment on Chinooks even though the Army doesn’t want them and adds $40 million to the Marine Corps’ $807 million request for King Stallions.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.