Faster modernization of the Army National Guard’s aging UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter fleet and reports investigating the F-35’s engine and logistics system are among the proposed additions to the defense authorization bill sought out by the House Armed Services Committee’s tactical air and land forces subcommittee. The subcommittee released its National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) proposal April 22.
The NDAA, which will be debated by the full committee next Wednesday, will also contain funding for the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet, the Marine Corps’ F-35B, the Army’s Hercules Improved Recovery Vehicle and the Javelin missile for the Army and Marine Corps, committee staffers told reporters during a briefing. They declined to disclose the quantities suggested by the subcommittee, adding that it would be debated next week during the full committee markup.
In its unfunded priority list delivered to Congress last month, the Marine Corps requested six F-35Bs, the Navy wants 12 F/A-18s , and the Army sought out 16 Hercules vehicles past the amounts requested in the president’s fiscal year 2016 budget. The Army and Marine Corps requested $91 million and $77.5 million for Javelin, respectively.
The subcommittee does not support funding the eight F-35C aircraft requested by the Navy in its unfunded priority list, said the staffer, who declined to explain why.
The subcommittee’s proposal calls for two reports on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), which is manufactured by Lockheed Martin [LMT]. The first, an independent assessment of the F-135 engine made by Pratt & Whitney [UTX], would investigate the June 2014 engine fire incident and the potential impacts to the program’s cost, schedule and performance. The subcommittee also would mandate a U.S. Comptroller General review of the JSF’s sustainment system, the Autonomic Logistics Information System, or ALIS, also developed by Lockheed Martin.
The engine provision is not meant to resurrect attempts to build an alternate engine for the JSF, the staffer said.
“It’s a single engine aircraft. This is a very important part of the aircraft and it can’t fly without it, and it’s going to have long-term implications,” the staffer said. “We’re just saying, let’s just have an independent team look at it and make sure we’re on the right path. So there’s no attempt to slow or stop the program or anything like that.”
The subcommittee is also concerned that the Army National Guard’s UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter fleet, which comprises about 334 aircraft, is becoming too expensive to fly, the staffer said. Many are so old they are no longer deployable. The NDAA proposal would require the Secretary of the Army to submit a report to Congress on options for accelerating the replacement of the Guard’s A-models. Sikorsky [UTX] manufactures the UH-60.
The current plan, assuming the Army’s Aviation Restructure Initiative is approved, is that all UH-60As will be replaced by 2023, the staffer said.
“How can we move that date to the left?” he said. “What would it take if we were going to try to move that divestment date from 2023 to 2020,” either by upgrading UH-60As to the L model or replacing them outright with M or V models.
The report would include the funding and quantities required to support the acceleration of UH-60A replacement, as well as possible ramifications to the other services’ Black Hawk modernization efforts, the proposal stated.
The subcommittee will mark up the bill tomorrow.