Effects of Sikorsky layoffs unknown
A run-of-the-mill corporate restructuring to boost profits, or a flag of surrender against the prospect of the Army backpedaling on its planned replacement for the Black Hawk helicopter?
Lockheed Martin isn’t delving into details — but the company’s decision to cut jobs at the parent division of Sikorsky leaves plenty of open questions, given an increased appetite in Congress and the Biden administration to amp up military spending for emerging threats in Asia and Europe.
On Tuesday, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet Jr. noted a spending bill enacted by Congress late last year that increases by 10 percent of the budget for the U.S. Department of Defense. For Sikorsky, that includes an additional 10 rescue helicopters for the U.S. Air Force to be assembled in Stratford, on top of 75 that had already been earmarked; and 40 Black Hawk helicopters for Australia.
Taiclet and Lockheed Martin’s chief financial officer cited increased Sikorsky orders as a contributing reason for Lockheed Martin hitting a record, $150 billion backlog entering this year.
“We’ve been expecting all along in our longrange plan that the U.S. government and Congress would step up to meet the reality of the global geopolitical situation,” Taiclet said Tuesday. “That’s exactly what played out in the budget process for (fiscal year) ’23.”
Lockheed Martin nevertheless reserved $100 million late last year to pay for job cuts or transfers out of its rotary and mission systems division that includes Sikorsky and several other businesses. The company did not provide any immediate estimates for how Sikorsky could be affected in the restructuring.
As of Wednesday, the division listed about 1,170 job openings against an employment base of some 35,000 people, about a fifth of the open jobs in Moorestown, N.J. where Lockheed Martin makes sensors, radar and other
systems for maritime operations and missile defense. A radar systems development plant has the next largest number outside Syracuse, N.Y., followed by Sikorsky’s Stratford-area operations which had about 140 openings.
In addition to its massive headquarters plant there, Sikorsky has an airframe assembly factory in Bridgeport, engineering offices in Shelton, and a Trumbull office that supports commercial and international customers. A spokesperson indicated Sikorsky has about 8,000 employees in Connecticut today.
The Army delivered a gut punch to all of them this month, after informing Lockheed Martin its choice of the Bell V-280 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft to replace the Black Hawk helicopter, over the Defiant-X helicopter Sikorsky and Boeing had pitched. Sikorsky and Boeing are now protesting that decision to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
“We continue to believe that Defiant-X, with its increased speed, range, maneuverability, and survivability, is the transformational and most cost-effective aircraft that best meets the selection criteria,” Taiclet said Tuesday during a conference call.
Textron, the Providence, R.I.-based parent of Bell, included the possibility of an Army reversal among the risks investors need to factor into any purchase of its stock, as part of a Securities &
Exchange Commission filing on Wednesday.
But a Department of Defense office may have provided a clue last week of the military rationale for Army brass, in a document that reviewed the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft replacement program for the Black Hawk, among a number of Pentagon priorities. The document emphasized the extended range required of any aircraft, which would allow commanders more options to cover possible combat zones in the Pacific Rim region or Eastern Europe.
“Units will utilize FLRAA’s increased speed, range, and maneuverability to assault enemy forces from areas of relative safety outside the range of enemy longrange fires,” the Pentagon’s Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation wrote in an annual report published last week.
Last year, Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky touted the Defiant-X covering 800 miles to Nashville from West Palm Beach, Fla. with ample fuel to spare, as an example of the helicopter’s range. But Bell advertises the V-280 Valor’s range at just over 2,400 miles — sufficient to cover a round trip between the two cities, and a return trip to Nashville to boot.
The V-280 Valor operting range would allow pilots to cover much of eastern Europe from the main U.S. Army hub in central Poland on a single tank of fuel, or for their Pacific region counterparts to fly missions from Japan, South Korea or the Philippines across large swaths of the East China, South China and Philippine seas — even farther if allowing for aerial refueling over open water outside the range of enemy air defenses.