WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The U.S. Army’s aviation director at the Pentagon told the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee on Wednesday what could happen to the service’s pilots and aircraft should a yearlong continuing resolution become a reality and offered up grim consequences should full sequestration be restored in fiscal 2018.
If full sequestration returns in fiscal 2018, the pilot readiness challenge the Army already faces will be further exacerbated, Peterson said, and the service anticipates suffering “readiness hurdles with respect to airframe materiel readiness.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Major programs the Army has long fought to keep in order to modernize the force would also need to be halted entirely or slowed, Peterson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two are programs that are needed to keep the current fleet in the air for what could be another 50 years or longer\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the CH-47F Chinook cargo helicopter Block II upgrades and the Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP\u00a0\u2014\u00a0would be in trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ITEP has long been proclaimed a top priority, but it\u2019s been a long road to develop the future engine that will ultimately replace the current engine in roughly 3,000 UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. The engine will be more powerful and fuel-efficient and will help compensate for the growing weight of both aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Army leaders stressed the engine replacement was its No. 1 priority, but after it wrapped up the science and technology phase, it struggled to get off the ground for well over a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service awarded contracts to two teams developing possible ITEP engines to submit preliminary designs: the Advanced Turbine Engine Co.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney team\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and GE Aviation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service is expected to make a critical decision on the ITEP program in 2018, choosing one engine design to continue into the engineering and manufacturing development phase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More outlying modernization efforts the Army is seeking to speed up could also be delayed, including the Future Vertical Lift initiative, which is expected to become a program of record in 2019 to field a new helicopter in the early 2030s. The service plans to fly demonstrator aircraft this fall to inform the future program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And “probably the most salient and important is that we will slow or defer very important protection and countermeasure initiatives that are underway right now,” Peterson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Peterson\u2019s testimony is just a small preview of what\u2019s to come as the service chiefs plan to testify at the House Armed Services Committee on the consequences of the ongoing CR on April 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Army\u2019s aviation director at the Pentagon explained to a House subcommittee what could happen to the service\u2019s pilots and aircraft should a yearlong continuing resolution become a reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":115185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":14,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["news","your-military"],"primary_category":"news"},"5":{"categories":["news"],"primary_category":"news"}}},"categories":[44,8,14],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3330],"class_list":["post-56940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-budget","category-congress","category-land"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"7NXRS7G5MVGQXDZI2RQD373PTY","arc_canonical_url":"\/land\/2017\/03\/29\/general-warns-of-yearlong-cr-impact-to-us-army-aviation\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n