Posted on 07/09/2008 2:38:51 PM PDT by decimon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army said on Wednesday it might cancel a $6.2 billion Textron Inc (TXT.N) armed helicopter program after finding that projected costs had soared more than 40 percent above initial estimates.
One possibility is that the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter, or ARH, being built by Textron's Bell Helicopter unit, could be "terminated" after a mandatory review, but the Army has a critical need for its capabilities, said Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Probably give the contract to Boeing.
Or Mil.
Then they could call it the B-Hind...
The Army is having no luck at procuring new helicopters. They canceled the Comanche, the Osprey (which is mainly for Marines but has a SF mission, too), and now this
/mark
The Pentagon is just starting a major retrenchment, in preparation for a hostile congress and possibly a hostile president. This means that lots of relatively good contracts that were on the wish list are over, unless members of congress step up to defend them.
The job of the Pentagon is to defend the US, as wisely as possible, even if some of our idiotic, but popularly elected leaders are so ignorant, hateful, or philosophically blind that they are willing to leave the US open to attack, or even encourage our enemies to attack us.
The Pentagon got lots of bruises and contusions during the reign of those two imbeciles Carter and Clinton, so we can only hope that for the foreseeable future their bets are hedged, they can make do, and that they are crafty enough to avoid having our personnel sent on wild hair, whimsical missions, to get killed because insane people are running the D.C. asylum.
The honor and valor are theirs. It can neither be given nor taken away by scoundrels. But everything else is negotiable.
You may be right but I’m not a great fan of military procurement. I would want the best tools for the job and not the most expensive.
As for congress, I think the best of them will too often vote out of political rather than military considerations.
Good one.
Sad but true.
Seems that no one can be trusted anymore, from Chief's of Staff on down. Everyone has one thing on their mind, and it's not the welfare of this country.
Except maybe for the new guy - Gates.
Seems as though he is more than willing to do some house-cleaning.
The Osprey hasn't been canceled as far as I know. It never had an Army component either, again AFAIK. It's deployed with the Marines in the sandbox now. The Air Force will have the SF version, and AFAIK, the Navy ASW version is still viable, although with the decrease in the emphasis on that mission, it may not last. (IMHO, it's a stupid decrease in emphasis, they think the ChiComs and even Iranians have no subs?).
But the Osprey is the exception to the "generalist" rule and to the Navy can't develop a new aircraft observation I made earlier. Of course the Navy has a bunch of Marines tasked on that program, as well as Air Force involvement, which might be helping to keep them focused. :)
Australian Air Force ordered KC-30B.
Australian Army ordered Tiger ARH.
What do you think?
they drank the KOOL AID
From that evil and unreliable Wiki:
Development
The Department of Defense began the V-22 program in 1981, first under Army leadership, then the Navy/Marine Corps later took the lead in developing what was then known as the Joint-service Vertical take-off/landing Experimental (JVX) aircraft.
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