I think the original story was in the FT which is usually much more accurate than the BBC

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a803f062-c...nclick_check=1

The proposal being aired is for a £1billion fast track investment in Chinook avoiding the usual tendering process, a tendering process which would of course involved Merlin and Agusta Westland.

The Future Medium Helicopter project was supposed to replace Puma and the Sea King junglies but may be pushed aside to make way for this.

The article states the proposal is for 20 new build Chinooks which works at at £50mil a pop, as we all know new build Chinooks come from that nice man at Boeing at around £22-25 million depending on the optional extras so either they meant dollars or someone has got something wrong.

It then goes on to state that 'lower priority' projects will be reconsidered in order to fund it, like we can find a billion quids worth of low priority projects just hanging around.

If it is true then expect lot of complaining from South West MP's and the Agusta Westland lobby as the Merlin would have normally been a shoe in, probably with a tail fold utility version like the Italians have.

The real story isnt about airframes anyway, its about availability (for various reasons) and its the same all over. We have about 40 chinooks but why only 10 available for theatre, same with other types.

We have just gone for upgrades across the fleet

Upgraded 22 Lynx, £6.5million each, total contract value £140million
Upgraded 37 Chinook, £11million each, total contract value £408million
Upgraded 27 Puma, £11million each, total contract value £300million
Upgraded Merlin, not sure of the contract values

*These numbers are approximate

Plus the contract for the 8 Chinook HC3's and the 6 Danish Merlin's

I would hardly suggest this is not spending the cash but is a classic example of saving a few quid years ago to have to spend a much greater amount when your back is to the wall and your suppliers know this as well.

The Merlins by the way have either been in the US doing pre-deployment training or being modified for theatre.

Originally Posted by meridian

The proposal being aired is for a £1billion fast track investment in Chinook avoiding the usual tendering process, a tendering process which would of course involved Merlin and Agusta Westland.

snip

The article states the proposal is for 20 new build Chinooks which works at at £50mil a pop, as we all know new build Chinooks come from that nice man at Boeing at around £22-25 million depending on the optional extras so either they meant dollars or someone has got something wrong.

snip

If it is true then expect lot of complaining from South West MP's and the Agusta Westland lobby as the Merlin would have normally been a shoe in, probably with a tail fold utility version like the Italians have.

Unfortunately, Agusta Westland will probably have a hand in this, which would result in the higher prices.
http://www.agustawestland.com/product/chinook-ich-47f

To quote from their site: The Joint Industrial Agreement between AgustaWestland and Boeing also includes a licensing arrangement that enables AgustaWestland to market, sell and produce these “Chinooks” for the United Kingdom, other European countries and several countries in the Mediterranean region.

Oh well, business as usual, then. The UK government overpaying for kit and everyone else wondering why there's not enough money to go round.

Knowing Brown this wont be on top of the budget, something will be lost to pay for these.

Originally Posted by meridian

We have about 40 chinooks but why only 10 available for theatre, same with other types.

my suspicion (albeit uninformed civvie suspicion!) is that the chiefs want there to be something left of the helo fleet at the end of the conflict. the 10 ch47 out there will be going through their airfame hours at a hell of a rate. If we sent 10 more, they too would be going through their hours with no chance that the treasury would fund replacements.

Perhaps this is what Gen. Dannatt meant when he said we shouldn't break the armed forces on these operations.

Are three any Chinooks for sale?

They are an old airframe, is the factory at Boeing still open?

AINonline

according to this Boeing has a factory for Chinooks in Philadelphia...

Originally Posted by SkiCarver

Originally Posted by meridian

We have about 40 chinooks but why only 10 available for theatre, same with other types.

my suspicion (albeit uninformed civvie suspicion!) is that the chiefs want there to be something left of the helo fleet at the end of the conflict. the 10 ch47 out there will be going through their airfame hours at a hell of a rate. If we sent 10 more, they too would be going through their hours with no chance that the treasury would fund replacements.

Perhaps this is what Gen. Dannatt meant when he said we shouldn't break the armed forces on these operations.

More likely the airframes will be rotating through in order to spread the hours across the fleet rather than just burn them all of ten airframes. They will all have to return to the UK at some point for depth maintenance anyway. End result is the same though, just the overall fleet-wide hours being burned off at a higher rate.

It's not just a case of airframes either, as others have pointed out. Whilst things like facilities at KAF or Bastion can be built at fairly short order, and to an extent spares packages/GSE/other hardware to support them, I would be interested if we have enough manpower to deploy all these new toys. No point in deploying airframes unless we have the pilots/groundcrew/technicians to fly them, fuel them and fix them.

Originally Posted by Whet

Originally Posted by plant_life

What really fcuking annoyed me was the comment from some MP saying "it's all very well and good deploying helicopters to Afghanistan but there is nowhere to put them". Well, d1ckhead, whilst you and the rest of your mob were milking the expenses I was in KAF for a short while last year prior to shifting to Helmand. I know for a fact that all the concept designs had been completed for moving JHF in it's entirety over to Bastion. I know this as I ran with it for a bit. We were waiting the funding approval. Whilst I'm not going to say precisely how much funding we had asked for I'm pretty sure all of the expenses that the MP's have had to pay back would have gone some way to paying for a new JHF! Cheers you bunch of cnuts!

Funny that - I heard some bloke in green and standing in the middle of KAF say exactly the same thing.

So who's riight - you or the occifer?

I'd probably say me as I had all of the concept design documents in my hand and ready to go out to tender last September. We were waiting for funding approval prior to putting out the ITT.

can I have a job guarding these new chinnooks when by mistake no one orders rotor blades for them
need somewheere quiet to finish my ou course

Originally Posted by Porridge_gun

Are three any Chinooks for sale?

They are an old airframe, is the factory at Boeing still open?

Plenty of Chinoks for sale on a ≥ 12 month delivery schedule if the Porridge Wog gets out the cheque book.


US Army has ordered something like 300 brand new CH-47F's. They trade in their old CH-47D models every time they get a new CH-47F delivered which Boeing can then rebuild, update and sell on through a programme called CHAPS at £10 million a pop. It's a WIN-WIN for the US Army, Boeing and the end user. Canada used this scheme to get a Wokka fleet fast tracked into service.




ATE:11/01/05
SOURCE:Flight International

Sale of used Chinooks to finance new-build airframes for US Army

The US Army has received approval to dispose of hundreds of used Boeing CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters on the export market and use the proceeds to help buy 300 new-build Chinooks.

"We got approval to sell the first aircraft this morning," Col William Crosby, CH-47 programme manager, told the Association of the United States Army aviation symposium in Washington on 6 January.

The unique financing strategy - called the cargo helicopter airframe procurement support (CHAPS) programme - is intended to serve both a potential foreign market for a cheaper alternative to acquiring new-build CH-47Fs and the army's desire to buy new airframes.

The CHAPS framework became possible after the army changed its acquisition strategy for the Chinook programme early last year. The service's original plan called for the remanufacture of older Chinooks to the F-model standard. However, the army accepted a Boeing proposal to provide new build CH-47Fs at a significantly lower cost than a remanufactured aircraft.

The shift reopened the Chinook production line in Boeing's Philadelphia plant, but also created a surplus of older CH-47s now in service that would have to be retired. Instead, the army will try to use CHAPS to dispose of as many of these airframes as possible to foreign customers.

The army's CH-47F manufacturing programme is in hiatus while Boeing clears a production backlog of MH-47Gs for the US special forces. F-model production is planned to resume in 2006 with deliveries of new-build aircraft.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles...r-us-army.html