Defense Technology International - April 2008 - (Page 30) ROTORCRAFT HEAVY-LIFT SIKORSKY CONCEPT Marines are buying 156 Sikorsky CH-53K heavy-lift helicopters. last November, Boeing submitted a revised proposal in January for another round of source selection. A contract award is expected in mid-year. Boeing had delivered 39 F models and 42 G models to the Army as of Feb. 29, says Eland. The first MH-47G combat deployment was in Afghanistan in March 2007 by the 3rd Bn., 160th Special Operations Aviation Regt., from Ft. Campbell, Ky. At that time, the first unit to be equipped with the CH-47F (the 7th Bn., 101st Aviation Regt., 101st Airborne Div., Ft. Campbell) was working up to operational readiness, a milestone achieved in July 2007. The second unit to be converted, last month, was the 2nd Bn., 4th Aviation Regt., 4th Infantry Div., at Ft. Hood, Tex. There is also a small number of Fmodel Chinooks at the Army Aviation Center at Ft. Rucker, Ala., for tactics development and training. Further units (typically receiving 13 aircraft each) are to be re-equipped with CH-47Fs at a rate of two per year, with the next to receive the helicopters being a cavalry unit at Ft. Hood. “So far, the units that are flying with the F-model have maintained a 90% mission-capable rate,” claims Eland. “This is because we’ve worked hard on maintainability of the platform, through better design and better features for testing, while the aircraft are, of course, new. “Boeing is also providing support onsite, primarily by managing the unique30 ness of the aircraft as compared to the previous CH-47D model that the Army crews were used to. We’ve been contracted to provide this just for the initial phase of introduction,” Eland says. “It would be great to get some kind of total life-cycle contractor support arrangement, but that is not on the Army’s books now.” Of the 452 F models planned for the Army, 113 are new-builds while the remainder will be so-called “renew” aircraft. “We say ‘renew’ as opposed to ‘reman’ or remanufactured because these aircraft—half of them current Dmodel Chinooks, the remainder being used MH-47Ds and Es—will receive a completely new fuselage rather than a refurbished one as in the case of reman aircraft,” says Eland. The drive trains and rotor systems will still be refurbished, though. The CH-47F program started out in the late-1990s when two initial engineering manufacturing development aircraft were built. First flight was in June 2000, and low-rate initial production (LRIP) of seven aircraft was ordered. But a more urgent requirement to develop and field MH-47Gs materialized in parallel. “We ended up building just one of the LRIP aircraft as an F model; the other six became G models,” says Eland. “The whole of the second lot of aircraft was also changed to G models. As a result, CH-47F fielding slipped a year to the right. That extra year was used to push through a major redesign of the CH- 47F concept, as well as to apply a lot of new lean principles to our production line,” he notes. “We managed to take 30% of the projected cost out of the aircraft and were able to recover the investment we made to do this in the first 17 aircraft.” According to the program manager, key changes introduced were a total redesign of the aft fuselage (reducing the cost of the structure by as much as 48%); adoption of the common avionics architecture system (CAAS) integrated glass cockpit from Rockwell Collins; a digital automatic flight-control system from BAE Systems; low-speed flight-control algorithms and various situational awareness items such as Blue Force tracking. “We basically looked at our growth road map and cleaned the slate on everything that had the right technology readiness level to be incorporated at that time,” says Eland. “We took the first LRIP F-model aircraft, which we delivered in July 2004, back in November of that year, upgraded it with all the new equipment and started flight-testing it again in April 2005. In November 2006, F-model series deliveries started and within a year we had delivered 30 aircraft.” Boeing currently has firm orders for 59 new CH-47Fs and 29 remanufactured ones. The most recent contract, 11 new F-models for the Army (included in the total) worth $280.5 million, was announced at the end of February. The company is also negotiating a AviationWeek.com/dti DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL APRIL 2008 http://AviationWeek.com/dti
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