Stratford-based Sikorsky Aircraft celebrated the delivery of its 5,000th Black Hawk helicopter on Friday as the company continues to contest the recent loss of the contract to build a successor aircraft.
U.S. Army officials were on hand at one of the company’s hangars off the Merritt Parkway to take part in the “logbook transfer” ceremony for the hulking black chopper, which will go into service with the Missouri National Guard.
Sikorsky President Paul Lemmo said the milestone was especially significant coming in the same year the company celebrates its 100th anniversary in business. Founded in 1923 by Russian immigrant Igor Sikorsky, the company is now a division of Maryland-based Lockheed Martin.
“Any time you get to build 5,000 aircraft of anything, it’s pretty remarkable,” Lemmo said. “The Black Hawk and all of our other products represent an incredible culture of innovation that’s been with us since the company started… innovation is part of our DNA, and it continues to flourish here.”
The Black Hawk debuted in 1978 as a military workhorse with an anticipated run of only 1,000 aircraft. Versatile and adaptable to multiple uses and environments, the chopper’s basic airframe is now used internationally and in fields like rescue and firefighting.
Black Hawks have been used in combat in conflicts in Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan and many others and will continue to be constructed in Stratford for the next several years under ongoing U.S. Army contracts.
The long-term future of the Army’s helicopter fleet is at the center of the recent contract dispute, in which Sikorsky lost out to Texas-based Bell on an initial $1.3 billion bid to build a long-range assault aircraft seen as a successor to the Black Hawk. The program will likely be worth tens of billions more in coming years.
Sikorsky filed an appeal to challenge Bell’s award in December, citing cost and other concerns. The U.S. General Accountability Office is currently considering the challenge and will issue a report in April, Lemmo said.
Elected officials including U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, Gov. Ned Lamont and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro were on hand at Friday’s event to stress their support for Sikorsky and its challenge to the Future Vertical Lift bid award. Bell’s product, a tiltrotor aircraft, would require extensive retrofitting of the Army’s helicopter fleet.
“We will continue to press the Army and the Department of Defense to get all the information that we need to represent the taxpayers of this country,” Murphy said. “This is such an important award with such implications for cost to the taxpayer.”
Sikorsky officials stressed that the Black Hawk platform is still in production and in high demand internationally. The company has also debuted a new heavy-lift chopper, the CH-53K King Stallion, in production for the U.S. Marine Corps and the Israeli military.
No major job cuts in Stratford are planned in the near future, Lemmo said.
“This [Future Vertical Lift] decision has no major immediate impact on our workforce here,” Lemmo said. “There are many other programs here… they fluctuate from year to year, and so we may make adjustments from year to year, but this particular decision does not have any major immediate impact.”
“We see Hawk aircraft continue to have a global impact for the decades into the future,” Lemmo said. “That is why we are committed to offering our support to keep the capabilities of these aircraft second-to-none and continue to modernize this platform into the future.”
Contact Liese Klein at lklein@newhavenbiz.com.
