An artist rendering of the Boeing Company's HH-47 helicopter is shown.
Cool picture. I never thought a 47 could look mean.
Fly Boeing!
Seems like the Air Force would need long range SAR aircraft to be able to get in and out of combat situations. Not a huge bus to go in and pick up one or two downed pilots.
This could hurt my nephew. He works for Sikorsky and this is the second major government helicopter order they have lost in as many years.
Last month they set him to work 2 of five days a week from home, so that his office/desk/space could be shared with someone else working three days a week from home. That's a cost cutting measure to keep people while reducing their expenses for offices.
In the engineering/military-industrial businesses,
the offices are easy to replace, the technical and engineering expertise and experience is not. When these firms lose too many contracts, they often lose talent that they never get back. Thus, they lose the human factor that creates the ideas for competitive products. These companies become large, buying the smaller ones out, so that they have enough business to keep a solid core of their best talent on staff.
Sikorsky's ability to do that is getting harder and harder.
Are these new-build aircraft or overhauled Vietnam-era choppers?
http://www.boeing.com/rotorcraft/military/hh47/index.html
Link to Boeing HH-47 page.
Boeing's Ridley operation to grow with Chinook contract Friday November 10, 10:13 am ET
The Boeing Co. has been awarded a contract worth up to $10 billion to build the next combat search-and-rescue helicopter for the Air Force.
The Chicago aircraft maker and defense contractor will build the helicopter at its plant in Ridley, Pa. The plant, which employs 4,800, will add 200 engineers for the work. Boeing (NYSE:BA - News) won the contract over Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT - News) and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., which is a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp.
(NYSE:UTX - News)
The new helicopter will be an advanced version of the Chinook, which Boeing has been making since the 1960s. The Chinook is the CH-47; the new helicopter will be the HH-47. Boeing will begin work on the new helicopter as soon as the engineers are hired and plans to complete the first one in about three years. The helicopter is expected to be in service by 2012.
The contract calls for Boeing to build four test versions and 141 production versions of the helicopter.
Support and maintenance for the helicopter could raise the value of the contract for Boeing to $13 billion to $20 billion.
Published November 10, 2006 by the Philadelphia Business Journal