The president of Sikorsky Aircraft is feeling confident with full order books and the successful purchase of Poland’s PZL-Mielec in the bag. He talks to Graham Warwick about Black Hawk and more.
Q What has Sikorsky brought to Paris this year?
We do not have a lot of hardware here because it is all off fighting wars or transporting oilworkers. And because our products are doing so well, we are seeing something close to an explosion in the international market. There is unprecedented growth in foreign military sales requests for the Black Hawk and interest in our new Naval Hawk – the Sierra.
Q Is that demand causing you production problems?
We now try to standardise on the US military variant, and customise from there. It causes less disruption in the supply chain.
But we will do anything the customer wants. Take the Turkish and Singaporean Naval Hawks; they have completely different missions systems and Sikorsky does the system integration.
Q Will your purchase of Poland’s PZL Mielec help?
We have started tearing it down and building a state-of-the-art factory. The company is approved to start building UH-60M cabins and the International Black Hawk.
We are in the final stages of defining the configuration of the International Black Hawk and expect to see Black Hawks out of PZL in 2010-11.
Q What is the status the Armed Black Hawk?
We are working with Israeli industry on the Armed Black Hawk and plan to start flying weapons by the middle of next year. We are developing a kit that will fit any variant of the Black Hawk in 4h and give it the same capability as an Apache, without the Longbow radar – turret gun, 1.75in rockets, Hellfire and a second missile.
Q How is business on the civil helicopter side?
The S-92 and S-76 are doing really well. We have increased production on both lines and will do so again in 2008. We are moving into the last of the mission areas planned for the S-92 by announcing a big paramilitary customer here at Paris. Now we have the basis for a very capable military transport helicopter.
Q You have filed another protest in the USAF contest, why?
I am not exactly thrilled with the narrowness of the evaluation. The taxpayers deserve the best value and I am not convinced we are yet seeing the right evaluation criteria for any of the products offered, especially ours.
Source: Flight Daily News
