The Final Blow ?
Cancelled White House chopper 'useless': Pentagon
WASHINGTON : New White House helicopters will cost less than a cancelled 13-billion-dollar program that proved too expensive and ‘useless’, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Lawmakers this week scrapped a long-running project to build the VH-71 presidential helicopter, backing a request from President Barack Obama who had ridiculed the program as extravagant.
But a Republican member of the House of Representatives, Maurice Hinchey, charged on Wednesday that Pentagon documents showed plans for a new helicopter would carry an even higher 20-billion-dollar price tag than the cancelled Lockheed Martin program.
Hinchey said the original project could be completed at less cost than starting from scratch.
"It could not be any clearer that continuing the development of the VH-71 program is in the best interests of taxpayers' wallets and the safety and security of the president," Hinchey said in a statement.
Defence Department press secretary Geoff Morrell rejected Hinchey's figures, saying he VH-71 program was "useless to us" and was not close to completion.
"All I can tell you is the new helicopter program is being structured to cost less than the VH-71," Morrell told reporters.
The US Navy contracted Lockheed Martin to build a new fleet of 28 helicopters to serve as "Marine One" in 2005. The project originally was meant to cost around six billion dollars but the price skyrocketed up to about 13 billion dollars, according to Morrell.
Each aircraft would now cost about 400 million dollars -- more than the cost of the two adapted Boeing 747 aircraft now serving as Air Force One.
Having sunk more than three billion dollars into the VH-71 program, the government had only a few "empty aircraft" and would have to start over, he said.
"The bottom line is no matter what we spend on this, we're not going to get what we need. There is not a program to salvage," he said.
While officials have only just begun preliminary discussions on a new helicopter program, the next attempt will avoid elaborate technical requirements and be based on existing aircraft, he said.
"The requirements for the VH-71 were out of control," he said.
Both Obama and Defence Secretary Robert Gates held up the VH-71 program as a symbol of wasteful, slow-moving defence programs, and decried plans for an Armageddon-proof kitchen on board the aircraft.
"It would let me cook a meal while under nuclear attack," Obama said in August.
"Now, let me tell you something: If the United States of America is under nuclear attack, the last thing on my mind will be whipping up a snack."
The cancelled helicopter was to be based on Lockheed's EH-101 aircraft, currently produced by a British-Italian partner.
The new generation of iconic green-and-white helicopters were supposed to offer the president greater protection and a higher range than current Sikorsky models -- some of which are up to 40 years old.
The decision in 2005 to award the contract culminated an intense competition between Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp's all-American entry, the S-92.