Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
I wonder if the production line can be kept warm for FMS. There may be a customer in Eastern Europe soon.
Someone has to be willing to pay for those units built to keep the production line warm. If the US Gov't isn't willing to pay, the question would be would Textron/Bell be willing to build them on spec. realizing that if there isn't an approved by the USG sale, it has to eat the cost. For example, Boeing has said that absent a signed order by X date (this essentially means India) they will shut the Super Hornet line down; they're not going to order long term lead items "just in case". The C-17 is similar but came about a little different. Once USAF said it wasn't ordering any more Boeing announced that absent confirmed orders by a certain date they were shutting down. Now this was slightly different becasue Boeing felt there was still a demand out there. So it announced it was shutting down the line in 2015, but before then it would build 10 "White Tails", betting that they would all sell, given the worldwide interest. They were built entirely with Boeing's money. It was expected that most would go to India, but their pronouncement bureaucracy is much worse than even ours. While they were hemming and hawing and routing the planned order through their innumerable hoops, other nations stepped up and bought most of the C-17s built on spec so India didn't get all it wanted. Still, Boeing sold them al, so this was a good gamble. Given how the market is, though, I don't see Bell making the same commitment