LE BOURGET—Boeing is considering a bid on the U.S. Army’s Flight School Next program but has not yet decided what role it could play.
With hundreds of Boeing-made Apache attack and Chinook transport rotorcraft in service with the U.S. Army, Boeing officials say that such a bid makes business sense.
The Flight School Next initiative is seeking to replace the Army’s fleet of Airbus UH-72 Lakota twin-engine light utility helicopters based at the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker, Alabama, with a simpler, lower-cost, single-engine rotorcraft that focuses on bringing rotorcraft training back to more basic skills.
Earlier this month, the Army called on industry to submit their bids with the solicitation for the Flight School Next program calling for proposals formatted as white papers under a fast-track acquisition process to be delivered by Oct. 31.
Mark Ballew, the company’s senior director for Vertical Lift Business Development, told journalists here at the Paris Air Show that Boeing is in active talks with several companies.
“There has been interest from companies that want to do this, and they would like Boeing to participate with that,” Ballew said.
“We want to be part of it as well, because it’s the future and how they [the Army pilots] get into the next aircraft.”
Ballew said there were still several issues to be worked out, not least what airframe could be adopted as the company does not produce a light helicopter, having decided to discontinue production of its AH-6i Little Bird.
“Boeing will most likely have a role to play in that, but how in-depth that is, is still to be determined,” Ballew said.
So far, Bell and MD Helicopters have thrown their hats into the ring proposing variants of the Model 505 JetRanger X and the MD530F, while Airbus is hoping it can persuade the Army to stick with the Lakota, aiming to shave cost by streamlining existing maintenance contracts and adjusting the program of instruction to address certain areas of the training syllabus.
Ballew said Boeing is also in discussions with the U.S. government on the plans for the fleet of Army AH-64D Apaches that are to be divested from the service as part its Army Transformation Initiative. Some 91 AH-64Ds would be removed from the inventory as part of the plans, moving the service to a pure fleet of newer model AH-64Es.
Ballew said the OEM is working to understand the plan for the aircraft, airframes and components and has looked at five potential courses of action, but the U.S. government needs to take the first step.
“That [decision] allows us to influence what we do, how we help them and then how we help any of the international customers that would be interested [in the Apaches],” he said.
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