US Coast Guard idea to extend service lives of existing aircraft attacked in Congress
A rebaselined Deepwater re-equipment programme presented to Congress by the US Coast Guard has the US helicopter industry worried because it proposes extending the service lives of the existing Eurocopter HH-65H and Sikorsky HH-60J and abandons plans for a new helicopter.
Sources say plans for a recovery and surveillance helicopter dubbed the VRS have been dropped, and instead the USCG plans to retain and upgrade the HH-65 and HH-60. Deepwater prime contractor Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman team, had identified the Bell/Agusta Aerospace AB139 as its "notional" VRS.
The AB139 had fallen out of favour for the VRS requirement because it could not match the range of the HH-60J. Instead, Bell/Agusta had begun angling the aircraft towards the companion Multi-mission Cutter Helicopter (MCH) requirement. But under the Deepwater plan the HH-65 will be upgraded to meet the MCH requirement, while the HH-60 will receive avionics and other upgrades and continue in service.
Critics of the revised modernisation plan argue it is a step backwards to thinking built around legacy assets, rather than the overall system-of-systems performance specification on which the Deepwater programme is based. Industry is concerned because the HH-65 would evolve into the MCH – and essentially become a Eurocopter EC155 – without there being a competition.
Describing the revised plan as "inadequate", critics in Congress have attacked the rebaseline because it "appears to propose continued spending on legacy assets at the expense of new assets".
GRAHAM WARWICK/WASHINGTON
Source: Flight International
