Navy Terminates Contract for VH-71 Presidential Helicopter

www.defense-aerospace.com...

The Navy today announced that it will terminate the VH-71 System Development and Demonstration (SDD) program contract. The announcement follows a Department of Defense (DoD) decision to cancel the existing presidential helicopter replacement program.

knew this would happen - after once again lockheed totally fecked it up - westland delivered the aircraft ontime within budget - lockheed then trippled the price!

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[edit on 2/6/2009 by Mirthful Me]

Originally posted by Harlequin
www.defense-aerospace.com...

knew this would happen - after once again lockheed totally fecked it up - westland delivered the aircraft ontime within budget - lockheed then trippled the price!

It had nothing to do with Lockheed, the customer changed the requirements and abilities drastically after the contract was issued - thats why the costs ballooned.

The aircraft was marketed as a relatively simple adaptation of the successful EH101 helicopter. However, new requirements imposed on the programme after contract award forced the USN to launch a major re-design.

www.flightglobal.com...

For once, this doesn't look like a contractor screwup, but the ultimate customer wanting more capability and not wanting to pay for it. Happens all the time in my industry - feature creep.