The Marine Corps on Thursday awarded Lockheed Martin [LMT] a $304 million low-rate initial production (LRIP) contract for two CH-53K helicopters, another milestone in the $27 billion program for the service’s new heavy lift aircraft.
The Pentagon in April approved the Navy’s request to move into the production and deployment phase for the CH-53K King Stallion following a successful engineering and manufacturing development effort by Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky unit. The King Stallion will replace the CH-53E Super Stallion and will provide three times the lift and range of current platform.
The Lot 1 LRIP award was made by the Naval Air Systems Command for the Marine Corps. The two aircraft, including spares and logistical support, are scheduled to be delivered to the Marine Corps in 2020 for operational use. The new aircraft are actually airframes seven and eight of the planned buy of 200 CH-53Ks.
“We have just successfully launched the production of the most powerful helicopter our nation has ever designed,” Col. Hank Vanderborght, Marine Corps program manager for NAVAIR’s Heavy Lift Helicopters program, said in a statement. “This incredible capability will revolutionize the way our nation conducts business in the battlespace by ensuring a substantial increase in logistical throughput into that battlespace.”
In June the CH-53K complete its first extended flight, a six-hour, an 810 route from Sikorsky’s West Palm Beach, Fla., facility to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland that included two fuel stops along the way. That flight was the first of several longer-range tests this year and next as the flight program moves to Patuxent River.
The two Lot I aircraft will be built at Sikorsky’s headquarters in Stratford, Conn., making them the third and fourth CH-53Ks to be built there.
Lockheed Martin said that compared to the CH-53E, the CH-53K is a foot wider, allowing it to carry a Humvee, a European Fenneck armored personnel carrier, or a standardized pallet while leaving the troop seats installed. The new aircraft’s external hook system can also lift three independent loads at once.