But when you look at the time horizons involved, someone will usually show up with "in the near term our budget dollars are less" and make a sound case for the Conversion/SLEP. Again, there are caps to budgeting and programming dollars in each fiscal year, and in the 2, 5, and 12 year time horizons.
FWIW, I think there are a dozen or so A models still hanging around, somewhere. I wonder if they are just too old to remanufacture into L's.[/QUOTE]
I agree, somewhere someone is making the case for all of this to be sure, and I’m also sure local politics is playing a role in the decisions, hopefully not to the detriment of actual war fighting capabilities.
As far as A Models go, the last of them are being sold as part of the Blackhawk Exchange and Sales Team, they are being auctioned off through the GSA(as well as some L Models) and some A+ airframes were abandoned in Afghanistan.
The Airframe Condition Evaluation(ACE) team scores figure in to what gets divested and what gets a service life extension.
I’ve heard that the S-92 drivetrain was designed with an eye towards being available for a potential capability enhancement for the H-60M, would be interesting to see an “M+” configuration with the new S-92B main gearbox. MH-60M already flies with the heavy S-92A bifilar assembly.
Whatever happens there will be a lot of interesting new developments in US Army Aviation in the next decade for sure!
FltMech