PERHAPS THE AMERICAN public can only digest one helicopter-related story at a time, but the Marine Corps's recent announcement that the controversial V-22 Osprey will soon be deployed to Iraq--which captured national headlines--is overshadowing a simmering scandal in the Air Force's CSAR-X competition.
CSAR stands for Combat Search and Rescue. The Air Force currently operates 102 Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters to perform that mission. The HH-60s average 25 years old, and the service is desperate to replace them. Last November, the Air Force announced a winner in the competition to select a replacement: the Boeing HH-47, a new variant of the venerable Chinook.
Almost immediately, concerns arose about how the twin-rotor Chinook had beaten out the Lockheed Martin/AgustaWestland-built US101 and Sikorsky's H-92. Protests from Lockheed and Sikorsky ultimately led the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to side with the losing companies. The GAO reported that "upon our review of the record, including a hearing conducted by our Office, we find that the Air Force's evaluation of O&S [Operations and Support] costs was inconsistent with the RFP [Request for Proposal]."
The GAO finds the total cost for the Boeing proposal to be $38.9 billion, including production, operations, and support, while US101 would cost closer to $35.9 billion. The cost breakdown is redacted in the publicly released report, but sources familiar with the program say that the $3 billion difference in cost is a factor of production alone, not operations and support. O&S costs were estimated at $23 billion across the board, though the Lexington Institute's Loren Thompson (who has consulted for Lockheed) says he is "incredulous that operating a helicopter with two separate rotors can be as efficient" as the single rotor aircraft from Lockheed and Sikorsky--apparently the GAO was as well. Regardless, out of the box the Lockheed helicopter is 20 percent cheaper than the Chinook.
The Air Force chose the most expensive solution--nothing unusual about that. The Air Force is typically willing to pay a huge premium to bring its warfighters the best available technology. But it's far from clear that the Chinook, which first saw action more than 40 years ago in the Vietnam War, is the best available technology. Further, it's not clear that the Chinook met the most basic requirements of the RFP. Though the protests were sustained on the basis of cost, Thompson reported last month that GAO had informed the Air Force of "numerous other issues raised by Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky that could be a basis for further protests if not addressed."
Those other issues may now be moot, as the GAO's lead examiner explained in an email on March 9:
As a further clarification, we note that because the recommended remedy includes reopening discussions with offerors and then requesting revised proposals, necessarily leading to a new evaluation, it is our view that the recommended remedy renders the issues not addressed in our decision academic. Therefore, we do not believe it is appropriate to discuss the merits of the issues not addressed in our decision.
As an "academic" exercise, it is still worth examining those other issues, the most troubling of which is that the RFP specifically called for a "medium lift" aircraft, and according to nearly everyone, including Boeing at various times, the HH-47 is a "heavy lift" helicopter. Here's how Defense Daily described the problem in December:
Although Boeing's own informational materials describe the HH-47 as a "tandem-rotor, heavy-lift, high-altitude" platform, the Air Force actually considers it to be a medium-lift helicopter, say Susan Payton, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition . . .
Payton defended the decision based on an Air Force document, described as a matrix, which judges the HH-47 to be a medium lift helicopter. But reporters were suspicious, and repeated requests for the Air Force to produce this matrix led Defense News to report a month later that "there is scant evidence such a document exists."
