Meet The $13 Billion Presidential Helicopters The US Scrapped And Sold To Canada
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The presidential fleet does include a few VH-60N “WhiteHawk” helicopters, which are newer and slightly smaller than the Sea King, however the VH-3D constitutes the operational backbone of the group with 11 units in all. The VH-3D is a derivative of the Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King, a medium lift transport chopper that’s been in service since 1961. So by the start of the 21st century, the Sea King was nearing abdication and the Marine Corps started looking for a replacement.
By January 2005, the Navy decided to go with the VH-71, redesignating it the US101. This 18-seat (4 crew, 14 passengers) all-weather helicopter measures 64 feet long and 22 feet high with a 61-foot rotor diameter powered by three 2,520HP GE CT7-8E turboshafts. It was originally designed as a Combat Search and Rescue platform. The Navy awarded the initial $US1.7 billion contract to AugustaWestland, pre-production design began, and that’s where the trouble started.
This near-tripling of cost did not sit well with the newly elected Obama administration. Running on a platform of change and fiscal responsibility after nearly a decade of ongoing military incursions into the Middle East, the incoming administration viewed the bloated VXX program as a meaty means of demonstrating both campaign promises to a waiting American public.
Despite the Navy in 2008 giving the go-ahead on the project (knowing full well about exorbitant cost), the VXX program ended in February 2009 — after the price had risen again to a solid $US13 billion — at the behest of President Obama himself. Instead, he directed that the remaining funds being applied towards upgrading the current Sea King/NightHawk fleet. Simply solution, right? Not quite, said the Congressional Research Service.
The CRS ran the numbers on the President’s plan and discovered that axing the VH-71 and retrofitting the VH-3D would, in the long run, end up costing the US taxpayers somewhere in the range of $US14 billion – $US21 billion — not to mention the $US3 billion they’d already blown on the Kestrel R&D so far. A savings bonanza, it was not. Plus any future fleet purchases wouldn’t be affordable until at least 2024, by which point the Sea Kings would be nearly eligible for Social Security.
By the end of 2009, the White House and DoD had reached a decision on the program. Upon signing the joint House and Senate Defence Appropriation Bill for FY 2010, the president sealed the fate of the VH-71. The bill appropriated $US130 million in total for the VXX program. $US100 million went towards recouping the programs various technology R&D costs while the remaining paid the Navy for its initial program studies. The administration was washing its hands of this R&Debacle, there would be no Kestrel for the foreseeable future.
With the program effectively back at square one, the US Navy published another RFP for a next-gen presidential helicopter. Lockheed quickly jumped ship and signed on with Sikorsky’s proposed S-92 while Boeing has made a few vague rumblings about taking up with AugustaWestland to give the VH-71 another shot (and if not the Kestrel, perhaps an Osprey or a Chinook).
Whether or not the program moves forward in the next few years makes no difference to the nine VH-71s that had already been completed when the program was led out behind the woodshed. In June of 2011, the US government sold them to Canada for a tidy sum of $US164 million (more than paying for the FY 2010 appropriations tab). They’ll be used for spare parts for our Northern neighbour’s existing fleet of CH-149 Cormorants, another SAR derivative of the AH101. Word is, Canada might be eyeing them for use as VIP transports as well.
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