UP IN THE AIR
With Black Hawk replacement contract gone, Sikorsky’s fate remains an open question as planners map out future needs
Last month, the president of Electric Boat recollected the days two decades ago when 12,000 jobs ebbed away at the submarine shipyard in Groton, as the U.S. Navy reassessed the fleet following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In Stratford, nowhere near as many jobs are at stake for Sikorsky after the Army opted for Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft as the replacement for the Sikorsky Black Hawk. But short of a reversal — or a major new contract for another Army helicopter for reconnaissance missions — Sikorsky could throttle down employment in the Bridgeport region by potentially thousands of jobs over the coming decades, as production shifts to Texas-based Bell and parent Textron to make potentially thousands of V-280 Valor aircraft as the Army’s future workhorse.
Sikorsky’s 8,500 employees in Connecticut contributed to the completion of 110 aircraft last year, along with another 4,500 in other facilities. Sikorsky declined to make an executive available for questions on the impact of the Pentagon decision and any next steps by Sikorsky, to include the possibility of a formal bid protest based on any flaws it might find in the Bell proposal versus its own.
The manufacturer’s president addressed the contract last March during a forum sponsored by the Vertical Lift Society, asserting the military stood to gain not just in the flight characteristics of Defiant-X, but by saving money in not having to undertake any major overhauls of air bases.
“You don’t really need new hangars, you don’t need new landing spots, ground-support equipment,” said Paul Lemmo, president of Sikorsky. “We designed and built this to be compatible with the Black Hawk infrastructure — which we think is a big deal.”
It was evidently not a big enough deal to sway Army planners, who chose the Bell V-280 Valor. The Army is not revealing details of the basis for its decision citing proprietary information. Multiple members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation have signaled their intent to get more information from the Army, including U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee; Rep. Rosa DeLauro on the House Appropriations Committee; and Rep. Joe Courtney on the House Armed Services Committee.
Bell has yet to say where it would build the V-280 Valor. The Texas-based Textron subsidiary makes the V-22 Osprey aircraft in Amarillo, with the V-280 representing a smaller version of the tiltrotor aircraft.
Texas, Connecticut and Virginia share the three most expensive Pentagon programs today. The biggest is the F-35 Lighting II fighter jet which was earmarked for $12 billion in spending in the 2022 fiscal year ending in October. Lockheed Martin assembles the F-35 in Forth Worth, Texas, strapping on F135 jet engines there that are made in East Hartford by
the Pratt & Whitney subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies.
After the F-35, the next two biggest programs are split between Groton and Newport News, Va.: the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines now under construction by Grotonbased General Dynamics Electric Boat as prime contractor, with Huntington Ingalls making key sections of the sub at Newport News Shipbuilding; and the Virginia-class of attack subs built separately by Electric Boat and Newport News.
Combined, the F-35 and two sub programs gobbled up 23 cents of every dollar spent by the on new hardware in fiscal 2022.
While no single Sikorsky helicopter cracks the top 15 Pentagon procurement programs today, the four models made in Stratford and Bridgeport today combined for nearly $4.1 billion in government revenue in fiscal 2022 — a total that would combined would rank fifth on the Pentagon wish list, behind the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers which are made at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard in Maine, and a Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Mississippi.
For Electric Boat President Kevin Graney, the memories are still fresh for his shipyard's trough just after the turn of the millennium, before it won the contracts for Virginia and then Columbia subs.
“Electric Boat, during the ‘peace dividend' at the end of the Cold War, went down from about 20,000 people to about 8,000 people,” Graney said, speaking last month at a New Haven
forum sponsored by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development. “There was a period there in the early 2000s when we didn't deliver a submarine for about eight years.”
But as Electric Boat wallowed, the ripple effect turned out to be limited for the larger New London-area economy. Unemployment peaked in 2003 at 4.8 percent on an annualized basis, lower than the statewide average for Connecticut, though growth at the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos did not produce jobs that paid nearly as well as at Electric Boat.
Sikorsky faces no such immediate stretch of the doldrums, with a steady pipeline of work in the coming decade from the CH-53K King Stallion helicopter it is building for the U.S. Marine Corps, alongside Black Hawks, Jolly Green II rescue helicopters for the Air Force, and VH-92A transport helicopters for the White House which will have a fleet of 23 in all.
And Sikorsky still has high hopes for selling Black Hawk and King Stallion helicopters to other militaries — not to mention a civilian version of its Black Hawk as well for commercial use on the home front, after obtaining an Federal Aviation Administration certificate last year allowing it to do so.
But it is an open question whether any significant civilian market will materialize, given lackluster sales for Sikorsky's S-92 and S-76 helicopters in recent years, and the continuing leaps in drone evolution. Sikorsky recently shuttered a Coatesville, Pa. plant that had led production of commercial helicopters, with the manufacturer shedding close to a 1,000 jobs there between 2015 and the closure,
some of them external contractors.
“One of the reasons why we closed the Coatesville facility is that we're always looking at our capacity versus demand, and making adjustments on facility footprints,” Lemmo said last March during the Vertical Flight Society forum. “That's kind of the best way to adjust your cost structure.”
The Defiant-X failure intensifies the pressure on Lemmo and Sikorsky to land the armed scout helicopter it has proposed that could save many jobs in Stratford over the long haul: the similarly designed Raider-X, which has capacity to carry troops and equipment in addition to operating as a forward observer and attack helicopter.
Bell is in the hunt as well with its proposed Invictus helicopter under the Army's Forward Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program. The Pentagon has delayed a decision on the helicopter program, leaving some analysts wondering if it is having second thoughts as aerial drone technology improves. Lemmo said last March he was expecting a decision in 2024.
“FARA ... is the Army's fourth attempt in recent years to acquire a new armed scout helicopter,” stated Ray Jaworoski, senior aerospace analyst for the Newtown market research firm Forecast International. The armed scout role for the Army is currently performed by AH-64 Apaches and unmanned aerial vehicles, and these platforms would be tasked to do so indefinitely if FARA is significantly delayed or even cancelled.”