Defense Procurement News

In a contract that has fallen to the back burner recently due to KC-45 events, the Air Force announced that they would complete the recompete for the CSAR-X by September. Contract award would be soon after. The CSAR-X contract to replace the HH-60 PaveHawk aircraft was originally awarded to Boeing with a variant of the CH-47. Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin protested and won with the GAO ruling that the Air Force did not apply the selection criteria properly. The whole contract was recompeted with Boeing, Sikorsky and Lockheed resubmitting bids.

For more see this article at www.pressconnects.com for the Binghamton area.

The story out of Canada is that the contract to buy 28 H-92 aircraft from SAC is sliding to the right. There are also rumors of cost increases. The Canadian government is threatening to cancel the contract if delays and cost increases are true. Normally for a contract like this to buy an established system starts experiencing slips or cost growth there are usually requirement changes or the contractor didn’t really provide what the customer desired. There is no word yet on what has happened. It may be that Sikorsky was just a little aggressive in their schedule.

The Motley Fool has some interesting analysis about the recent award by the US Army of the UH-60 production contract to Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation (SAC), which is part of UTC. While the size of the contract is large, $1.7 Billion, it is a drop in the bucket in total UTC revenues. SAC also has had the lowest margin of any part of the company. The article is here. While it is true that UTC is a very large corporation, the award will keep SAC busy for several years and has the potential to spin off Foreign Military Sales and other work.