The U.S. Defense Department’s cancellation of the Army’s Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) program has set off a flurry of activity within the service.

The Army’s operations director, Lt. Gen. James Thurman, told reporters early Oct. 17 that he will do everything he can to push new requirements back to DOD’s high-level Joint Requirements Oversight Council by January 2009 and re-open competition for an aircraft.

“The Army has an enduring requirement [for manned, armed reconnaissance],” Thurman said at a hastily arranged Pentagon roundtable. “We will move as fast as possible to replace [the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior].”

Thurman promised that his “priority every day” will be to re-validate ARH requirements as quickly as possible so a new competition can commence. By Oct. 20 he will personally take a written document that pushes for a requirements review to the Training and Doctrine Command, he declared.

Pentagon acquisition chief John Young announced late Oct. 16 that he had decided not to re-certify ARH, which incurred a Nunn-McCurdy breach due to cost and schedule overruns. The announcement cited Bell’s cost estimates, which ballooned from $359 million for development to $942 million, and from $8.56 million per unit to $14.48 million. Deliveries originally scheduled for next year had slipped to 2013.

“This was not a surprise,” according to Lt. Gen. Ross Thompson, Army acquisition chief, who spoke at the roundtable. “All the triggers in the acquisition process have been pulled... We got to the point where [the Bell ARH] was no longer the right decision.”

The program already went through one near termination, but was thought to have been on the right track earlier this year. As recently as this summer, Bell officials were actively looking at ways to trim testing and cost, such as switching to a larger engine.

Now the Army is left with a fleet of over-used, combat-worn Kiowa OH-58Ds, which the ARH was supposed to replace. Since 2003, a fleet of 60 Kiowas has flown 394,111 hours in Iraq, averaging 72.7 flight hours per aircraft per month. In Afghanistan, 32 Kiowas have flown 27,768 hours, averaging 62.2 flight hours per aircraft per month. The Army will redirect their efforts to sustaining that fleet until a replacement for Bell’s ARH can be fielded.

Meanwhile, a safety enhancement program has upgraded all but 70 of the 342-aircraft Kiowa fleet. A follow-on program called Life Support 2020 will add improved sensors, weapons systems and survivability equipment.

A “mid-term bridging strategy” will take OH-58A and –C models and refurbish them so they can be put back in the field as D-models. The goal is to build back up the Kiowa fleet, which should stand at 358 aircraft, until a replacement is found. The bridging strategy, according to Thompson, will cost more than $800 million.

The Army blamed Bell’s relocation of production from Canada to Dallas, Texas, as a primary driver of cost and schedule overruns. Bell released a statement yesterday saying only it was “extremely disappointed by this decision,” adding the company still believes its aircraft is “the best replacement for the Kiowa Warrior.”

Photo: US Army