By Ann Roosevelt
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—By June, Boeing [BA] expects to have signed on to a five-year contract to support the CH-47 Chinook helicopter expected to save the service $500 million, according to officials.
“We’ve estimated half a billion savings,” Col. Newman Shufflebarger, Army Chinook project manager, said yesterday at the annual Army Aviation Association of America conference here.
The five-year contract will cover some 180-190 airframes, a mix of the renewed, F- and G-model Chinooks.
Right now, two-thirds of the Chinook fleet is “renewed,” meaning comprised of a totally new airframe, but with the engine, rotor blades, and drive train harvested from a D- model, Shufflebarger said. These parts are overhauled and brought to Boeing and mated with the new airframe.
To date, in Iraq, Chinooks have logged 98,000 flight hours. In Afghanistan, Chinooks have racked up 60,000 flight hours.
More than 407 Chinooks have rotated in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq, Shufflebarger said, flying some 50 hours per month with readiness levels in the high 70 to low 80 percentiles.
“Chinook has proven itself over there time and time again,” Shufflebarger said.
The Chinook program has support at all levels–Army leadership, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Congress–and the program is fully funded.
Boeing Vice President of Chinook Programs Jack Dougherty said 40 F-model Chinooks have been delivered. There are two fully equipped units and a third unit is being equipped now.
International sales are also coming, Dougherty said. The Army last month received a letter of request from Turkey, which would be fulfilled through the Foreign Military Sales program. These helicopters would have unique customization as most international customers require.
Additionally, “any day now” Boeing expects to receive a request for proposals from Italy for some 18-20 helicopters, he said. Also, there would likely be a collaboration with Italian firm Agusta.
Boeing continues initiatives to improve quality across the board, from engineering to proposals, to production, cycle time, inventory, delivery, all ultimately to drive costs down, Dougherty said.
What the Army wants is three aircraft a month until it reaches the 513-aircraft requirement.
Boeing is reducing lead-time down to 30 months now, and improving. “We want to be at 24 months lead [time], our expectation to be there at the end of this year.”
Lean initiatives are paying off in the factory and in the field, he said.
Field support personnel are in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are interim contractor support personnel with the units receiving the new F-model Chinooks, and will be available for a year or two until the Army reaches about 85 percent operational readiness.
Five years into the war, Boeing is still working the supply chain to get to where they really need it to be to supply the Army’s insatiable demands for helicopters and parts.
“We’ve already seen a 50 percent increase in dynamic component availability,” Dougherty said. The transmission needs to come up in the next two to three years.
Boeing sees some “three aircraft a month rolling off the production line for the next decade to satisfy the Army need and we see ourselves up to a situation getting up to five aircraft a month in the not-too-distant future,” he said. Should Boeing start up on the CSAR-X helicopter program, a contest initially Boeing won proposing the Chinook but now being recompeted after protest, and international sales materialize, there could be a steady state production of seven planes a month, a rate that could be sustained for the next 10 years.
Looking at the CH-47F future, Shufflebarger said he’s looking for more performance to buy back some performance lost with new equipment.
The CH-47 picked up weight with a new-machined airframe, which is heavier than the older airframe. However, the machined fuselage reduces cracks older aircraft develop. This improves maintenance and reliability.
A new blade concept is also being considered. A high efficiency blade gives a payload improvement, Dougherty said.
Dougherty said Chinook is at the stage of incremental improvement, looking to software packages, which can be dropped in immediately.