ARMY AL&T
open system architecture [MOSA], so that’s a huge advantage. And best of all, we’re making an old aircraft new again, to give this [UH-60L] airframe another 10, 20, 30 years of use in the Army.”
“So taking a Black Hawk and making it a UH-60V is millions of dollars cheaper than buying a brand new UH-60M model helicopter, and that savings can be used for funding the Army’s 31+4 programs which, in our case, is the Future Vertical Lift [FVL] program,” he said.
In another cost-saving initiative, all of the upgrades are being done at the Corpus Christi Army Depot rather than turn- ing to industry for modernization work. According to Lt. Col. Kenneth Ferguson, managing director for aircraft opera- tions at the depot, modernizing the Black Hawk is only a part of what they do at the Corpus Christi facility.
He said that the depot, which is mainly a helicopter component and repair manufac- turing facility, is broken down into three prime directorates—business, components and aircraft operations. On the aircraft operations side, which Ferguson oversees, there is the aircraft production team that builds the UH-60V; the flight test section, where all aircraft repaired or built at the depot is tested; and the on-condition maintenance—inspection of an item to see if it is fit or unfit—team that repairs all of the crashed or battle damaged aircraft that come in from the field that need to be fixed and sent back out again. Te Black Hawk upgrade program is “the bridge we need at the time we need it,” he said.
THE FRAMEWORK FOR FUTURE VERTICAL LIFT According to Ferguson, the Black Hawk is the most numerous aircraft in the force, and since the Army wasn’t able to acquire the UH-60Ms fast enough to completely
A LONG WAY TO GO
An electrician installs more than 20 miles of new wiring and digital components into a newly remanufactured UH-60V airframe.
fill the modernization gap before future vertical lift coming on, this created an aircraft modernization capabilities gap primarily in the Army National Guard and the Army Reserves.
“Replacing Limas with Victors will help modernize our force prior to the fielding of the first vertical lift aircraft, which will be a fully modern, fully digital open archi- tecture aircraft,” he said. “Te software on the Victor is slightly better than what we have in the Mike. Te Victor’s tech- nology will help bridge the gap between the current fleet and Future Vertical Lift. With the addition of Future Vertical Lift [FVL], it will be fully coupled so that it can be flown by a pilot or flown simply by the computer without pilot interac- tion. And so it’ll be a step further. Tis is a great middle step that enables us to go full digital. So if we get into a heavy conflict,
we’ve got commonality across the force in how we can employ these aircraft. Te 60V program does it quick, and it does it cheap.”
With the cost of a UH-60V being signifi- cantly less than a UH-60M, he said “Te Army has already paid for the Limas, so that’s part of the cost savings, but it also extends the life of that Lima that would have to be phased out due to aging out the airframes.”
SETTING CONDITIONS FOR THE FUTURE Parker said there are many other cost- saving initiatives conducted at the Corpus Christi Army Depot that set up condi- tions for the future, including the use of composites. “I believe the future for the vertical lift aircraft will require CCAD to be fully composite capable. So we’re
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