The Army continues to push ahead fielding the latest version of the CH-47 heavy-lift helicopter, the F model, produced by Boeing [BA] with international interest continuing, program officials said.
To date, six Army units have the CH-47F, and helicopters are aboard ship heading to Hawaii where the seventh unit, part of the 25th Infantry Division, will field the helicopters, Col. Robert Marion, Cargo project manager, said recently at the Association of the United States Army annual conference in Washington.
The Army wants a total of 525 CH-47F Chinooks, which are being sent to soldiers to match the Army’s fielding schedule.
Marion said the priority in his office as he looks at training and equipment is “reducing the burden on the soldier.”
With that priority in mind, new equipment training on the CH-47F has changed. Trainers go to the unit, the pilots, crew and maintainers are not sent away from home to train.
“The team was very, very successful in the first three units that we equipped so we were asked to look at continuing that for the remainder of the active unit components that we’re fielding,” Marion said. “We’re also now looking at how were going to approach that process for the National Guard and Reserve units as well.”
Three iterations of the same training take place to ensure all the unit is included in the training.
“That’s been a great success for us,” Marion said. “That model is being followed in some other programs, as well. It lets soldiers stay home.”
There is a good deal of international interest in Chinooks, the F model, and national variations, and some contracts are moving toward fruition.
For example, with the United Kingdom, Boeing is “working the process of terms and conditions as they work through their reviews and funding profiles,” said Leanne Caret, vice president of H-47 programs at Boeing Defense Space & Security/Mobility division. The United Kingdom, which has its own configuration, would like 12 Chinooks and two aircraft to replace those lost by attrition.
For the Netherlands, “we just finished formal qualification testing on the software build” for a sixth helicopter, based on the F model Chinook but with a different cockpit, for the Netherlands. Five have been rebuilt, and will head to Summit Aviation for completion in December.
During the summer, Boeing submitted an H-47 proposal to Germany for a variant of a combat search and rescue helicopter. The evaluation of proposals is going on now.
In Italy, Boeing is co-producing F models with Finmeccanica‘s AgustaWestland for the Italian army.
Turkey just finished signing a Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) potentially for F models. A contract is likely in 2011, Caret said.
Australia, as well, is looking at a LOA and contract award.
Additionally, “We just finished flight trials in India with the F model and the aircraft performed outstandingly,” Caret said.
With the rate of interest, the question for Boeing was how to produce the helicopters at the rate needed to meet the demand.
The production line went from a rate of three aircraft per month to four aircraft per month immediately last fall, when Caret took over the position. “We will be at five aircraft per month in January 2011 and are moving to a rate of six per month in June of 2012, and then we will stay at a steady state of six per month,” she said. “We’re actually doubling the rate in less than two years.”
To make it happen Boeing made a “significant” investment of $130 million “focused 100 percent on the Chinook production line. We’re actually the second largest capital project within Boeing,”
There will be a night and day difference in the factory when the work is done, she said.