Sikorsky wins Presidential helo competition
 

http://www.sikorsky.com/About+Sikors...004f62529fRCRD

Sikorsky wins Marine One Presidential helicopter contract | Vertical Magazine - The Pulse of the Helicopter Industry

Cheers

Sikorsky wins Presidential helo competition
 

6 aircraft plus 2 simulators ? I'd love to meet the team who ran the TNA on that one- brilliant.

And the lesson is......with enough political interference and contract re-runs the 'correct' answer will always be arrived at.

To be honest is anyone surprised though? Can't have POTUS using Eurp-peen aircraft.

Helpful Stacker,

Agreed, what on earth went on with AW and the Presidential EH101 contract? Have AW been 'silenced' with a pay off to compensate for the change to a US company or was there something genuinely dodgy in the initial decision?

Anyone know if there were actually any airframes designed and manufactured for the US Presidential contract? Where are the airframes now and if so has anyone shown an interest in them (Middle East?).

Morning Maroon,

There were 6 (?) airframes at Pax River, one of which I believe was ex Italian Navy ASH (Amphibious Support Helicopter).

They've now gone to Canada as Cormorant spares

Cheers

I believe the Kestrel programme finally floundered when AW had to admit they couldn't find room for the flux capacitor and teleportation system NAVAIR decided the president's helicopter desperately needed along with all the other post-contract additions they specified!

In fact all the helicopters ordered were delivered on time (or ahead of time) and on budget. The programme had become an albatross for AW in very short order with unreasonable equipment demands (which it should be noted Sikorsky couldn't have provided for then with the S-92 and couldn't now - look for a far more austere VH than Kestrel was intend to be), so I believe the cancellation was a fairly mutual agreement, AW had delivered fully on what was required up to that point, and had been paid in full. So the cancellation was received quite amicably, with full payment and no fault layed at AW's door - correctly.

NAVAIR pissed away billions on silly, unreasonable specs, and Obama probably quite rightly saw it for what it was and binned it.

As for Sikorsky "winning". . . didn't everyone else drop out?

I think AW figured this time that it wasn't worth their while. And after the last time (and let's not forget the whole tanker saga) who can blame them?

No different to what happened with the KC-X tanker requirement, when Airbus won with a superior product (as described by the USAF) only to have the competition 're-run' with Boeing as the eventual winner.

Boeing said at the time that this was justified as US taxpayers money should be spent on securing US jobs (despite the fact that Airbus was teamed with Northrop Grumman, and would be building the KC-45 in Alabama).

With no sense of irony, Boeing then teamed with AgustaWestland to offer the AW101 as the next Presidential helicopter.

It seems that what's good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander.

Let's just hope between the white house, the pentagon and NAVAIR all the folks grow a spine and say "no" to adding gold plated stuff this time.

I do imagine there will be increased capabilites between the 3 lots, hopefully not in the ridiculous range again (like the 2 safes)

No I'm not surprised by the winner, but then again projects everywhere are usually heavily influenced by the "buy here" "build here" politics. Even an Alabama built 'bus is a 'bus. I'm a honda car buyer, and most my hondas have been designed in the USA and have been built in Ohio, but it's still a Japanese make. I'm not saying it is right- but "made here" and brand nationality has a good deal of influence- and not just in the USA. The queen rides in a Bently or a Rolls, POTUS in a caddy, French PM in a variety of French cars, German PM in what? You guessed it a Benz....

Yes, there's a lot of sense in that sandiego89. My issue was more with Boeing deriding the European-designed but US-built KC-45/A330 as 'un American', and then getting into bed with AgustaWestland to offer a European-designed but US-built helicopter for POTUS.

Indeed! Gotcha. Seems they can try to spin it both ways! Also interesting on how Boeing and Lockheed/Martin are bitter rivals on fighter aircraft, but suddenly get all chummy for the next USAF bomber :} Same deal on some other helo projects. Seems politics and aerospace do indeed make for strange bedfellows.

No, this is not correct.

There were two parts to the original contract - one for several relatively unmodified AW101s for use by the support staff - these were delivered as you mentioned, and later sold to Canada.


The second part was for highly-modified aircraft - all the specified equipment brought the weight up so far that safe flight required more powerful engines, and from what I have seen, a larger-diameter main rotor and thus a longer tail boom, etc.

Naturally, 100% of this development & re-certification cost was billed to the US.

This was progressing fairly well, but was nowhere near delivery of even the first airframe when it was decided that the project had been infected with "gold-plated bloat", with lots of unnecessary equipment designated as "mandatory', and the decision was made to cancel the lot.

Sandie - The Queen's transport therefore is German. :ok:

According to someone I know who worked at AW, the VH-71 development went like this:

US: We need to add this black box
AW: What does it do?
US: We can't tell you
AW: How much does it weigh?
US: We can't tell you
AW: How much power does it need?
US: We can't tell you.

and so on. No wonder it got expensive!

VH71 variants
 

GK is nearly right...

The batch of aircraft delivered were to cover development of the increment 1 aircraft (TV2-5) plus a few (PP01-05) to allow the aircraft to enter service prior to a further production batch for full POTUS transport (TV1 was an MMI aircraft used to give NAVAIR a headsup on the platform, this aircraft is now back with the Italian Navy).

The PPs would have been fully NAVAIR compliant and would have been capable of carrying the Prez, the TV aircraft not as much as they were test assets.

So TV2-5 and PP1-5 were sold to Canada

Increment 2 would have been a significantly improved aircraft (an EH102?) that met the full desired capability (it was recognsied that neither aircraft proposed could meet the full desired capability of the White House without significant mods, hence the two increment approach)

The increment 2 aircraft would have been delivered as a batch of new builds plus a retro package on the initial airfranmes to arrive at the final desired capable aircraft, no hardware had been cut or designs close to being finallised when the plug was pulled.

So AW did deliver (as contracted ) 8 off increment 1 aircraft on time and budget to the Prime (LM) who ultimately were responsible for delivering the VXX capability to the US Navy. The growth in requirements was really an issue for LM but it impacted AUM etc of the basic airframe even at inc1 standard.

DM

Has any presidential Helicopter ever had to declare an emergency?

They fly the things fairly intensively and have been doing so for years (in different types of aircraft)

I'd be surprised if they were always trouble free........

At least they are deigned and built in England. Unless McLaren, Morgan or Ariel make a stretch limo it's as good as it's going to get.

As far as I am aware one model was styled in the UK but none engineered here. So it really is German, I think. just look at them - they're ugly thuggish slabs now.

Ugly thuggish slabs?

I disagree entirely.