An artist rendering of the Boeing Company's HH-47 helicopter is shown.
Posted on 11/09/2006 6:21:22 PM PST by Righty_McRight
WASHINGTON - The Air Force awarded a lucrative contract Thursday for search and rescue combat helicopters to a team led by aerospace giant Boeing Co.
Chicago-based Boeing beat out rival Lockheed Martin Corp. and helicopter maker Sikorsky Aircraft for the contract to build 141 helicopters by 2019 for the Air Force's fleet of rescue aircraft, known as the Combat Search and Rescue program.
The initial contract award is for $712 million; the program may be worth as much as $13 billion.
Some Wall Street and industry analysts had thought Maryland-based Lockheed would win. The Lockheed version had a roomier cabin and three powerful engines and was cheaper than Boeing's, a modified version of its CH-47 Chinook helicopter.
The helicopters will be built at Boeing's plant in Ridley Park, Pa., near Philadelphia. About 200 new engineering jobs will be created initially, with more jobs expected as production moves forward. There are currently about 4,800 employees in Ridley Park, Boeing spokesman Joseph LaMarca Jr. said.
The decision to award the contract to Boeing is the latest blow to Sikorsky, a division of United Technologies Corp., which sought to replace its own Pave Hawk helicopters that the Air Force has flown since 1982 on rescue missions.
Sikorsky, based in Stratford, Conn., spent about $1 billion developing the new S-92 model, according to analyst estimates, but it has yet to find a U.S. government buyer. Sikorsky has a deal to provide 28 to the Canadian government.
Boeing called the Air Force decision a vote of confidence in the company.
A team led by Lockheed had offered the US-101, the same helicopter selected last year for the Navy's presidential helicopter, Marine One. Boeing also teamed with Sikorsky to offer the S-92, a newer helicopter mostly used by offshore oil companies.
The Navy's decision to award the presidential helicopter fleet to Lockheed and its international partners, including the British-Italian company, AgustaWestland, sparked animated debate over buy-America issues.
Earlier this week, Boeing got a boost when FedEx Corp. became the first customer to cancel an order for Airbus' much delayed A380 superjumbo jets and said it would buy Boeing 777s.
FedEx cited production delays for its decision to retract an order for 10 double-decker A380s. Its FedEx Express unit has ordered 15 Boeing 777 freighters with a list price of $3.5 billion and taken options on an additional 15 planes.
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Associated Press writers Devlin Barrett in Washington and Stephen Manning in College Park, Md., contributed to this report.
Cool picture. I never thought a 47 could look mean.
Fly Boeing!
Seems like the Air Force would need long range SAR aircraft to be able to get in and out of combat situations. Not a huge bus to go in and pick up one or two downed pilots.
Beautiful helicopter. I don't mean to scare anyone, but does anyone know who will be Chairman of the House Armes Services Committee. Damn negative ramifications of the Dim win keep hitting me left and right.
This could hurt my nephew. He works for Sikorsky and this is the second major government helicopter order they have lost in as many years.
Last month they set him to work 2 of five days a week from home, so that his office/desk/space could be shared with someone else working three days a week from home. That's a cost cutting measure to keep people while reducing their expenses for offices.
In the engineering/military-industrial businesses,
the offices are easy to replace, the technical and engineering expertise and experience is not. When these firms lose too many contracts, they often lose talent that they never get back. Thus, they lose the human factor that creates the ideas for competitive products. These companies become large, buying the smaller ones out, so that they have enough business to keep a solid core of their best talent on staff.
Sikorsky's ability to do that is getting harder and harder.
I'm not sure who gets that, but HILLBILLY worked hard to get Weldon out to squash ABLE DANGER. Curt has been wonderful and helped our facility keep from closing many times. That's the thanks he gets (although our LABOR did support him).
Then we can easily refit the OSPREY/V-22 for that job.
We need to get B-1 Bob Dornan back. I miss that guy.
You are so right about that. Hopefully they will win a contract in the near future and beef up their resources.
Are these new-build aircraft or overhauled Vietnam-era choppers?
New build.
New build
Here is a link with more info on the chopper.
http://www.boeing.com/rotorcraft/military/hh47/index.html
I thought that was the whole reason for the Air Force buying V-22s..
http://www.boeing.com/rotorcraft/military/hh47/index.html
Link to Boeing HH-47 page.
Thanks. I had gotten the idea that the last Chinook was built in the '60s and that they just keep refurbishing the airframes.
I was hoping that Lieberman would try to make a deal for his state - join the GOP caucus in the Senate if Sikorsky got the deal. But in spite of how many Dim leaders treated him, he says he will stand by his word to remain in the Dim caucus, so it was no use even approaching him on it.
I worry for my nephew. His first of three kids just entered college this year, which means he has about ten more years of his children's college tuition to worry about. At least for only three of those ten years will two of them be in college at the same time. I guess his wife and him will live on bread and water those three years.
His first, is in a five year engineering program at Drexel. Its a five year program because in addition to the Bachelor's degree, she will be employed off and on during that time in various engineering jobs. Altogether, she'll have about 18 months of actual engineering employment experience when she graduates. The son of one of my neighbors is in a similar engineering degree program at Stevens in Hoboken (not a well known school outside of engineering circles, but very well respected among engineers).
If they've lost two of the large contracts in as many years -- perhaps they've already lost the "talent"..
Semper Fi
Boeing runs a nice intern program for engineers and the Ridley Plant is just outside Filthadelphia, not far from Drexel.
Boeing's Ridley operation to grow with Chinook contract Friday November 10, 10:13 am ET
The Boeing Co. has been awarded a contract worth up to $10 billion to build the next combat search-and-rescue helicopter for the Air Force.
The Chicago aircraft maker and defense contractor will build the helicopter at its plant in Ridley, Pa. The plant, which employs 4,800, will add 200 engineers for the work. Boeing (NYSE:BA - News) won the contract over Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT - News) and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., which is a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp.
(NYSE:UTX - News)
The new helicopter will be an advanced version of the Chinook, which Boeing has been making since the 1960s. The Chinook is the CH-47; the new helicopter will be the HH-47. Boeing will begin work on the new helicopter as soon as the engineers are hired and plans to complete the first one in about three years. The helicopter is expected to be in service by 2012.
The contract calls for Boeing to build four test versions and 141 production versions of the helicopter.
Support and maintenance for the helicopter could raise the value of the contract for Boeing to $13 billion to $20 billion.
Published November 10, 2006 by the Philadelphia Business Journal
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