The Army plans to move “immediately” into the next UH-60 Black Hawk multi-year contract upon the conclusion of the current procurement deal with Sikorsky [LMT] in fiscal year 2027, with the service’s secretary adding Wednesday it will be a five-year contract covering 24 helicopters per year.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, during a hearing pressed Army Secretary Christine Wormuth on the details of the next Black Hawk multi-year, which was included as a key priority of the service’s recent aviation restructure plan.
“When the current multi-year contract expires, it is our plan to have essentially a heel-to-toe arrangement so that the next five-year, multi-year contract will start immediately,” Wormuth said during the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing. “We will work closely with [Sikorsky] to make sure that the negotiations are worked out so that we can have no break between the two multi-year contracts.”
The Army and Sikorsky in June 2022 signed what was expected to be the final multi-year UH-60 Black Hawk contract, awarding the company a five-year deal worth $2.3 billion for delivery of 120 H-60M helicopters (Defense Daily, June 27 2022).
With options, the Army said the 10th multi-year deal for Black Hawks could potentially be worth $4.4 billion and cover up to 255 helicopters.
When the Army announced its major aviation restructure in early February, which included canceling development of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, it detailed plans to award another multi-year contract for UH-60M Black Hawks with the newly freed-up resources (Defense Daily, Feb. 8).
Army officials have cited that industrial base concerns related to the potential shuttering of its UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopter lines within the next five years factored into the FARA cancellation decision and the larger aviation pivot (Defense Daily, March 7).
DeLauro, whose district includes Stratford, Conn., where Sikorsky’s headquarters are located, asked Wormuth about the Army’s plans to ensure there’s no gaps between the Black Hawk multi-years “so production can continue without interruption” and the service’s long-term plans for the helicopter.
Wormuth noted the UH-60M the Army will buy under its multi-year has a “20-year airframe,” with the service also planning increased research and developing funding for additional Black Hawk upgrades in the coming years.
“We expect the Black Hawk to remain a very important part of our overall aviation portfolio for years to come,” Wormuth said. “Some of that [R&D funding] is looking at open systems architectures. Some of that is also going to be doing the integration work to bring the ITEP engine, the new engine, eventually into Black Hawk as well as the Apache. So those are some of the things that we’ll be doing with the Black Hawk going forward.”
DeLauro joined the rest of the Connecticut congressional delegation in pushing back against the Army’s FARA cancellation which included Sikorsky as a competitor against Bell [TXT], with both firms having worked on building prototypes (Defense Daily, Feb. 9).