Converting Two Black Hawks

Converting Two Black Hawks: With the termination of its CSAR-X helicopter replacement program, the Air Force is seeking $90 million to buy two UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters to replace two HH-60G Pave Hawk combat search and rescue helicopters it has lost. These UH-60Ms are the latest configuration that the Army is procuring from Sikorsky in a long-line of Black Hawks. The Air Force funding request would cover the costs of modifying them for the personnel recovery mission, service spokeswoman Lt. Col. Karen Platt tells the Daily Report. She says the Air Force is completing an assessment of the current UH-60M model to determine the level of modification that would be required. The service has not determined the nomenclature it would use for these helicopters, she said. When asked whether this approach might also be an option to speed replacement of the Air Force's UH-1N helicopters, Platt said that the Air Force is “assessing all available options” which would meet the requirements and schedule that the service has defined for this successor aircraft, which is provisionally known as the Common Vertical Lift Support Platform (see below).

—Michael C. Sirak

5/21/2009

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Preemptive Action
"Since the [Defense] Department's acceptance of the independent estimates last fall, we've been, in just about every respect, acting as if the program were in a Nunn-McCurdy breach. ... We've been taking all of the mitigating and corrective action that we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach."
—Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, discussing with reporters the restructure of the F-35 strike fighter program announced in February 2010 and the probability that the program will soon exceed Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds that would necessitate, per US law, a program review and corrective steps, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2010.

Verbatim

Message for Grandma
"She has working for her as a citizen in the United States an Air Force Reserve that has some very talented, capable, patriotic, and willing individuals doing the business to keep this nation free. Just like her generation—the 'Greatest Generation'—was, I am very proud of the folks that we have got. If not the second greatest, then they are an extension of the greatest generation and they are ready, willing, and able to do the things that she would want them to do to make sure we keep our freedoms."
—Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, responding to a reporter's question on what the reporter should tell his 85-year-old grandmother to convey to her the importance of Air Force Reservists to the nation's security, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19, 2010.