Pave Hawk replacement expected to bust budget

An Air Force effort to get new helicopters to rescue units “as rapidly as possible” has failed to deliver and could cost the service hundreds of millions of dollars more than planned, according to officials and documents.

Launched in 2009, the HH-60 Operational Loss Replacement program was meant to buy about two dozen helicopters to replace HH-60G Pave Hawks destroyed in combat or aged into uselessness. It was also meant to do it quickly — or at least far more quickly than the service could replace its entire combat search-and-rescue fleet.

Now, though, it appears the stopgap aircraft will deploy no sooner than mid-2014, just a few years ahead of a plan to replace the entire CSAR fleet. And these modified, rush-order UH-60Ms could ultimately cost some $39 million apiece, according to military and industry officials. That’s 50 percent more than the HH-60Gs they are replacing, according to an Air Force fact sheet.

Why the extra expense? One reason is that the Air Force, perhaps gun-shy of industry involvement after mounting a host of aircraft competitions that have collapsed, is considering paying the Army to do the modifications rather than contracting the work out. And the Army program has had problems of its own.

“With results like this, pretty much any private-sector outcome is going to look superior,” said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group, based in Fairfax, Va.

“The number we’re looking at are boutique production, and it’s very difficult to do that in a cost-effective way, so you’re going to have higher unit costs and you’re going to run the risk of some snafus getting magnified,” he said. “But on the other hand, it seems that industry’s track record with helicopter missionization is considerably better.”

CSAR FIASCO
For years, Air Force rescue teams have wanted more powerful helicopters that can perform better in high mountains and sweltering deserts.

Developed in the 1980s, their HH-60G Pave Hawks are all at least 14 years old. In the past decade, the aircraft have seen heavy use in southwest Asia, where their crews have saved thousands of injured coalition troops and civilians.

The combat search-and-rescue helicopter program was supposed to solve the problem by developing and buying one of the most sophisticated, networked helicopters ever built. But after the losing bidders protested in 2006, the program was killed by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, leaving the Air Force with a $200 million bill.

So service leaders abandoned their dreams of an all-new rescue helicopter and adopted a new plan: HH-60 Recap, which aims to replace old HH-60Gs with some type of new helicopter.

The program is slated to buy 112 aircraft; originally, the first ones were to reach initial operating capability by 2015.

But that date appears to have slipped to 2018, according to documents released earlier this month.

In the meantime, the HH-60Gs are wearing out. Today, fewer than 96 are flyable, and mission-capable rates are about 65 percent.

‘AS RAPIDLY AS POSSIBLE’
The Air Force launched the OLR program to relieve the pressure on current helicopters while the HH-60 Recap program starts producing aircraft.

The program was meant to “deliver aircraft to the war fighter as rapidly as possible,” according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford, military deputy for acquisition, and Lt. Gen. Herbert Carlisle, deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements, who submitted written testimony in March to a House Armed Services panel.

The Air Force decided to obtain the OLR aircraft from the Army, which has a multiyear procurement pact with Sikorsky Aircraft, the Connecticut-based helicopter manufacturer. Service officials say this was cheaper than purchasing the aircraft themselves.

So far, the OLR program has ordered four Sikorsky UH-60Ms; internal budget documents show plans to buy up to 20 more in coming years.

The first two UH-60Ms were delivered by Sikorsky on time and on budget in February, company spokesman Frans Jurgens said.

These two, which are sitting at a U.S. Army installation in Huntsville, Ala., along with the third to be delivered in October, will be given a limited set of modifications, including a 200-gallon internal auxiliary fuel tank, a forward-looking infrared sensor and an external rescue hoist.

This trio of modified UH-60Ms will then go to a U.S.-based noncombat unit that supports range testing, freeing up three combat-capable HH-60Gs for deployment, Shackelford and Carlyle wrote in their congressional testimony.

The modified helicopters were supposed to have gone to the noncombat unit in July but are still waiting to have the internal fuel tank installed, according to two sources close to the program.

HIGHER UPGRADES
The remaining OLR aircraft are slated to receive much more extensive modifications, including a forward-looking infrared sensor, a rescue hoist, defensive systems, better situational awareness displays, weapons, a refueling probe, internal auxiliary fuel tanks and better communications gear. But the Air Force has not yet decided who will install the extra gear.

Midlevel Air Combat Command officials overseeing the OLR program want to upgrade the UH-60Ms to the Army’s MH-60M special operations configuration, according to military and industry sources.

ACC officials will finalize the OLR plan by the end of October, said Master Sgt. Pamela Anderson, a spokeswoman for the command.

“[T]he Air Force has researched all available, non-developmental H-60 options to identify solutions that could most quickly meet the demanding HH-60G CSAR mission,” Anderson wrote in an Aug. 4 email. “These solutions are being analyzed as the Air Force continues to refine the OLR acquisition strategy.”

But the first combat aircraft are not expected to be delivered until 2013, and the modification work will likely take 12 to 18 months, she wrote.

“We are leveraging existing configurations and lessons learned to reduce this [initial operational capability] timeline as much as possible,” Anderson wrote.

One of the options, she wrote, is paying the Army to modify the UH-60Ms at its Blue Grass depot in Lexington, Ky.

The government-owned, contractor-operated shop has modified several H-60 variants for special operations use and upgrades Black Hawks for Army Special Operations Command to the MH-60M configuration.

After Sikorsky delivers new UH-60Ms to Blue Grass, they are essentially gutted. The engines, avionics and other equipment are removed; many of the components are sold back to the Army and used for spares for regular Black Hawks.

Then the engines and gear are replaced with more powerful and advanced versions, along with new gear such as an in-flight refueling probe. In all, it takes the Army more than 40,000 hours per aircraft to complete the modifications, according to several sources with knowledge of the work.

ENGINE WOES
The Army program, which aims to produce 72 MH-60M helos by 2014 but so far has delivered only a handful of test aircraft, has problems of its own.

A December briefing by the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command found major airworthiness deficiencies with the MH-60M, which flies with neither Federal Aviation Administration nor military airworthiness certificates.

The problems begin with the aircraft’s two General Electric YT706-GE-700 engines. Retrofitted into the H-60 airframe, they produce more than 2,500 shaft horsepower apiece, better than 20 percent more than the standard T700-GE-701D engines.

The added power puts stresses on the rest of the aircraft; the briefing says potential problems include uncontained failure of the engines’ compressor and exhaust sections; enough vibration to damage the transmission; and overheating of engine oil, avionics and other parts.

The stress makes rotors and transmissions wear out much quicker, and void the manufacturer warranty of parts and components, according to industry officials.