CH-53K delayed 8 months

Entry into Low Rate Production for the CH-53K has been delayed by 8 months, due to last year's gearbox problems and late delivery of parts by suppliers. First flight was achieved last October, three years late, and five years after CDR was complete. The parts delays, and gearbox redesign have delayed the last two engineering test aircraft, which will delay the flight test program. Cost has grown 44%, and operational testing has slipped back until June 2019. The second and third aircraft are due this year, and the program expects to fly 100 hours by the end of the year.

The Sikorsky CH-53K’s entry into low-rate production has been delayed again, this time by eight months to February 2017, because of gearbox failures last year and the late delivery of parts from suppliers, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports in its annual assessment of Pentagon weapon projects.

The King Stallion development effort achieved first flight last October – "nearly three years later than originally planned" and five years after completing its critical design review.

In January, the second test model began flying at Sikorsky's facility in West Palm Beach, Florida and the GAO report notes that it contains the improved gearbox that was first trialled on a ground test vehicle.

www.flightglobal.com...

It never ceases to amaze me how much money we spend on instruments of death and oppression. The USMC intends to purchase 200 CH-53Ks at at a total cost of $25,000,000,000 (25 billion). As of 2012 Census, there's approximately 206,189,000 taxable (working age) Americans. According to Tax Policy Center, about 45% of those Americans paid taxes in 2015, or 92,785,050 Americans. In that case, for just these first 200 CH-53Ks alone, the taxpayers are shelling out about $270 each.

You'd think there'd be at least one popular and loud group declaring that they'll no longer finance all these wars and social programs which they don't support. Or that they'll no longer fund their own oppression nor that of their neighbors. Then again, it would seem that the majority of Americans are quietly mumbling this anyway, as they pay nothing.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Another decade, another Stallion derivative shredding gearboxes...