A saga worth retelling as the AF goes forward with AF1...
Next Marine One helicopter achieves first flight
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Today at 11:53.
The
VH-92A is a modified version of the Sikorsky S-92 medium-lift helicopter with upgraded communications and executive-style interior enhancements. It will replace the aging VH-3D Sea King and VH-60N WhiteHawk helicopters currently used by the presidential air fleet. The
Marine Corps HMX-1 squadron will operate the aircraft.
The VH-92A is expected to enter service in 2020.
Its predecessor program for the VH-71 Kestrel was canceled in 2009 due to cost overruns and mismanagement pushed the price tag of the program to over $13 billion.
now lets go back how the Navy arrived at this point with the Prez's new Marine One
http://gizmodo.com/the-13-billion-presidential-helicopters-we-scrapped-an-978480541
The
VH-3D Sea Kings that currently shuttle the POTUS around have been ready for retirement since 2003. So why has it taken so long to find a suitable replacement?
In 2003, the DoD issued a Request for Proposals (basically an open solicitation bid sent out to defense contractors when the government wants new gear) for 23 new helicopters to replace the entire existing fleet—Sea Kings and NightHawks alike—designated the VXX proposal. Only two groups responded: Sikorsky (working with GE, Northrop, and others), which proposed a derivative of the
H-92 Superhawk and chopper transport of choice for many heads of state; and AgustaWestland (along with Bell and Lockheed), which put forth the
VH-71 Kestrel an American version of AugustaWestland's very successful
EH101 Merlin medium lift helicopter.
By January 2005, the Navy decided to go with the VH-71, redesignating it the US101. This 18-seat (4 crew, 14 passengers) all-weather helicopter measures 64 feet long and 22 feet high with a 61-foot rotor diameter powered by three 2,520HP GE CT7-8E turboshafts. It was originally designed as a Combat Search and Rescue platform. The Navy awarded the initial $1.7 billion contract to AugustaWestland, pre-production design began, and that's where the trouble started.
The project was immediately beset by cost overruns, and by 2007—two years its kickoff—the development and retrofit costs alone had ballooned by 40 percent ($2.4 billion) over initial estimates. By 2008, building the entire fleet of 23 whirly-birds would cost a staggering $11.2 billion—$400 million per bird, about what an Air Force One 747 would run you—up from $4.2 billion just three years before.
This near-tripling of cost did not sit well with the newly elected Obama administration. Running on a platform of change and fiscal responsibility after nearly a decade of ongoing military incursions into the Middle East, the incoming administration viewed the bloated VXX program as a meaty means of demonstrating both campaign promises to a waiting American public.
By the end of 2009, the White House and DoD had reached a decision on the program. Upon signing the
joint House and Senate Defense Appropriation Bill for FY 2010, the president sealed the fate of the VH-71. The bill appropriated $130 million in total for the VXX program. $100 million went towards recouping the programs various technology R&D costs while the remaining paid the Navy for its initial program studies. The administration was washing its hands of this R&Debacle, there would be no Kestrel for the foreseeable future.
With the program effectively back at square one, the US Navy published another RFP for a next-gen presidential helicopter. Lockheed quickly jumped ship and signed on with Sikorsky's proposed
S-92 while Boeing has made a few vague rumblings about taking up with AugustaWestland to give the VH-71 another shot (and if not the Kestrel,
perhaps an Osprey or a Chinook).
As Lexington Institute analyst Loren Thompson, told
Defence News in 2010, "I do not believe that the story of VH-71 is over... Secretary Gates has not made a convincing case for terminating the program, and there is no alternative helicopter that can satisfy range and payload requirements while still landing on the White House lawn."
Whether or not the program moves forward in the next few years makes no difference to the nine VH-71s that had already been completed when the program was led out behind the woodshed. In June of 2011, the US government sold them to Canada for a tidy sum of $164 million (more than paying for the FY 2010 appropriations tab). They'll be used for spare parts for our Northern neighbor's existing fleet of
CH-149 Cormorants, another SAR derivative of the AH101. Word is,
Canada might be eyeing them for use as VIP transports as well. [
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Images: AP]