In 2003, the DoD issued a Request for Proposals (basically an open solicitation bid sent out to defense contractors when the government wants new gear) for 23 new helicopters to replace the entire existing fleet—Sea Kings and NightHawks alike—designated the VXX proposal. Only two groups responded: Sikorsky (working with GE, Northrop, and others), which proposed a derivative of the
H-92 Superhawk and chopper transport of choice for many heads of state; and AgustaWestland (along with Bell and Lockheed), which put forth the
VH-71 Kestrel an American version of AugustaWestland's very successful
EH101 Merlin medium lift helicopter.
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By January 2005, the Navy decided to go with the VH-71, redesignating it the US101. This 18-seat (4 crew, 14 passengers) all-weather helicopter measures 64 feet long and 22 feet high with a 61-foot rotor diameter powered by three 2,520HP GE CT7-8E turboshafts. It was originally designed as a Combat Search and Rescue platform. The Navy awarded the initial $1.7 billion contract to AugustaWestland, pre-production design began, and that's where the trouble started.
The project was immediately beset by cost overruns, and by 2007—two years its kickoff—the development and retrofit costs alone had ballooned by 40 percent ($2.4 billion) over initial estimates. By 2008, building the entire fleet of 23 whirly-birds would cost a staggering $11.2 billion—$400 million per bird, about what an Air Force One 747 would run you—up from $4.2 billion just three years before.
This near-tripling of cost did not sit well with the newly elected Obama administration. Running on a platform of change and fiscal responsibility after nearly a decade of ongoing military incursions into the Middle East, the incoming administration viewed the bloated VXX program as a meaty means of demonstrating both campaign promises to a waiting American public.
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Despite the Navy in 2008 giving the go-ahead on the project (knowing full well about exorbitant cost), the VXX program ended in February 2009—after the price had risen again to a solid $13 billion—at the behest of President Obama himself. Instead, he directed that the remaining funds being applied towards upgrading the current Sea King/NightHawk fleet. Simply solution, right? Not quite, said the
Congressional Research Service.
The CRS ran the numbers on the President's plan and discovered that axing the VH-71 and retrofitting the VH-3D would, in the long run, end up costing the US taxpayers somewhere in the range of $14 billion - $21 billion—not to mention the $3 billion they'd already blown on the Kestrel R&D so far. A savings bonanza, it was not. Plus any future fleet purchases wouldn't be affordable until at least 2024, by which point the Sea Kings would be nearly eligible for Social Security.
Instead, the CRS put forth a four-option proposal for moving forward with a variation of the existing Kestrel program: One, continue the Kestrel model as currently developed (the Increment I and II versions, think of them as progressive prototype revisions). This option would cost about $10 billion and have the choppers in the air by 2019. Two, build 23 units of just the Increment I Kestrel. That would cost only $6.4 billion and would have had them ready by 2012. Three, build just 19 Increment I's for $5.9 billion and also be ready by last year. Finally, spend just $1.4 billion to upgrade the existing Sea King fleet though that wouldn't actually satisfy any of the requirements for future presidential helicopters and would still need to be replaced in the coming decades.
DO YOU THINK THIS IS WASTEFUL SPENDING ????
