Air Force lift measure called into question - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Air Force lift measure called into question

Air Force officials have said they used a Pentagon weight matrix to determine that the Boeing HH-47 helicopter would meet the service’s need for a new medium-lift search-and-rescue aircraft, but there is scant evidence such a document exists, according to defense and industry officials.

In November, the Air Force handed Boeing a $10 billion contract, which the service contends could be worth up to $15 billion, shocking many Pentagon observers who expected the Air Force to go with the lighter Lockheed Martin-AgustaWestland-made US101 or Sikorsky HH-92.

Lockheed and Sikorsky filed protests almost immediately, questioning whether the selection processes used by the Air Force and the Office of the Secretary of Defense actually picked a helicopter to meet a medium-lift requirement.

The Government Accountability Office is slated to open hearings on the CSAR-X selection next week.

Air Force officials justified their choice by highlighting the HH-47’s range and payload, both greater than the Sikorsky and Lockheed-Agusta aircraft. Service brass also say the Chinook is really a medium-lift helicopter.

Boeing and Pentagon fact sheets dating back several years call various versions of the venerable airframe heavy-lift.

So just how did the CSAR-X selection panel determine that the HH-47 would fulfill the medium-lift requirement?

“Relative to the Department of Defense,” the Office of the Secretary of Defense has developed a “fairly well-developed matrix that shows the demarcation point” between medium- and heavy-lift rotorcraft, Sue Payton, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions, told reporters in late November.

The Air Force and Pentagon have so far been unable to provide Defense News a copy or summary of the OSD matrix.

“It seems like something that’s not formally written down anywhere,” said service spokesman Don Manuszewski.

There “may or may not have been a matrix” that defined the classes for the CSAR-X selection panel, one Air Force official said. “There may have been charts depicting concepts for current [and/or] future presentation of each.”

Throughout the months-long competition, Boeing’s competitors and defense observers questioned whether the hefty Chinook variant met the service’s call for a medium-lift platform.

Nevertheless, “it appears there may never have been a rigid definition,” the service official said.

Several helicopter industry officials also drew a collective blank when asked about a weight matrix.

“Frankly, I just don’t know what it is they’re talking about,” one senior industry official said. The HH-47 “is a big, powerful machine, so I’d like to see this matrix.”

Said one Army aviation official: “I’ve heard of something like this, but it’s not really an official document.”

“Everyone in the [defense aviation] community seems to agree this needs to be done, so maybe this situation will” drive OSD to fashion an official definition of light, medium and heavy helicopters, he said.