Procurement woes: Army learns tough lessons from armed helicopter letdown.

ATLANTA -- The Army set out three years ago to acquire a new reconnaissance helicopter in record time. Its goal was to equip a unit with the aircraft within four years by using "commercial-off-the-shelf" proven technologies.

That goal will not be met. Meshing the tried and trusted technologies together proved harder than expected. And it ended up doubling the price tag that the Army initially had estimated for its Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter.

The terms "commercial off the shelf" and the closely related "plug and play" are favorites in PowerPoint presentations at conferences. The premises sound good on paper: buy a commercially available product and skip the expensive development work: or take different hardware or software components and blend them together seamlessly.

COTS "is a great bullet on a chart, and it briefs well ... but nothing happens without a hitch," said Greg King, director of government business development at FLIR Systems Inc., one of the ARH subcontractors.

While purchasing commercial-off-the-shelf technology causes little trouble when the military buys a flashlight, when acquiring something as complex as a helicopter, the term may be a misnomer.

As the Army and the aircraft manufacturer, Bell Helicopter Inc., continue to work to get the program back on track, acquisition officials say they are already getting smarter about how to convert commercial technologies to military products.

Claude Bolton Jr., assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said once the facts have been gathered on the ARH program, hard lessons will be learned.

"For any program to be done quickly--and particularly one like this ... requirements have to be firm, funding has to be them, the technology has to be them, and you have to have the right people on the government and industry side to execute it. Failing any or all of those, you have a problem," Bolton said at the Army Aviation Association of America's annual symposium in Atlanta.

The ARH is not an off-the-shelf system, Bolton said. Paul Bogosian, the Army program executive officer for aviation, agreed. "I wouldn't call this a COTS aircraft, but it has COTS features."

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with the immediate need to replace the aging Kiowa Warrior, forced the Army to set an aggressive acquisition schedule. Its goal was to equip a unit in a little more than four years--a remarkable reduction from the seven to 10 years such a program would normally take.

To do this, the plan called for the development, design, flight test and building of the prototype aircraft to all happen concurrently.

When it comes to a program with commercial-off-the-shelf elements, the devil is in the details, the Army and Bell discovered. Or perhaps more accurately, the devil is in the subsystems.

Earlier this year, Bell had difficulties integrating the Rockwell Collins-manufactured cockpit operating system, and FLIR Systems' target and acquisition system. That delayed the crucial "limited user test" by several months. The integration issue was resolved, but further difficulties were encountered with the unproven FLIR ball that houses sensors crucial for a scout helicopter. (See related story page 24)

The Army ordered Bell to stop the work, but immediately rescinded the directive. However, the company had to submit a revised plan explaining how it would proceed with the program and control costs. Army officials were particularly rankled by Bell's revised cost assessment in late 2006 that raised the ARH price to $10 million a piece, compared to earlier estimates of $5 million. The Army had projected it would buy more than 500 helicopters during the next decade.

Work continued at the company's own financial risk as the House Armed Services Committee urged the Army to fire Bell and to reopen the competition. In late May, the Army decided to retain Bell as the prime contractor.

"I think the Army took a measured risk by trying to procure this aircraft faster than usual given the nature of the airplane," Army Col. Keith Robinson, program manager for armed scout helicopters, said at a news conference. "Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out as expected. I think it was well worth the effort."

Bogosian said no matter how much a program relies on commercial technology, it will still go through a developmental cycle to integrate components, subsystems and COTS elements.

The military may purchase a commercially certified component, but because it's in proximity to a gun, for example, it may have to take into account vibration and heat.

"The Army must inquire whether the original certification was appropriate for the Army's needs," he said. "That's what we are learning on the fly."

Army officials point to other helicopter acquisition programs, based on COTS technology, that went off without major delays.

One is the light utility helicopter, the Lakota, which the National Guard and the Army will use domestically. EADS North America won the contract, which called for an aircraft already certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Since it won't be used overseas or in combat, the Lakota did not require weapons systems or survivability components.

"It's literally commercial off-the-shelf," said James Perkins, principal marketing manager at Rockwell Collins, which has provided the cockpit systems for nearly all the major helicopter systems, with the exception of the Lakota.

EADS provided a tried and trusted cockpit system, and there was little development involved, he noted.

One positive step in the helicopter industry is the common avionics architecture system (CAAS) now being used on most Army aircraft cockpits, Perkins said. The system was first proposed by the U.S. Special Operations Command, which demanded open, rather than proprietary, software for its AH-6 Little Bird light attack helicopter.

Rockwell Collins wrote the software, but no longer owns it. Any company can buy the architecture for its military aircraft. This increases both competition and cooperation between contractors, Perkins asserted.

CAAS hardware is designed to make it easier to insert new technologies as they come along. The software will also make integration simpler, he added, however, calling it "plug and play" would be incorrect. Swapping new communications software into a cockpit will take fewer steps, but glitches may still come up.

"It would be a stretch to say they're going to get eliminated," Perkins said.

Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, director of Army aviation, took exception to the notion that the Lakota was simpler to convert from a COTS into a military aircraft. The Eurocopter EC145 it was based on had to accommodate a medical evacuation variant, and integrate military command and control and sensor elements, he said at the Atlanta conference.

EADS faced the same challenges as Bell, but it delivered the Lakota on time, on schedule and on budget, he noted.

"It's about taking systems and doing software integration ... It's the business process you set up that will allow you to do that," Mundt said.

"Each company has its own business processes, and what you would hope--and I believe that we have--are business members who are learning, thinking organizations."

Bell, as a result of the delays and cost overruns, changed its management team.

"Everyone has shortcomings. The question is, do you learn from them and do you go on, and I think we've got people who are capable of doing that," Mundt said.

Bogosian said comparing the two programs and learning from their successes and mistakes are legitimate exercises. And while the overall message from the Army has been that the ARH delays and cost overruns are Bell's responsibility, he acknowledged that there were many unknowns when the service set out to build a new aircraft within four years.

Neither the Army nor Bell expected the dramatic increase in the number of commercial subsystems and components that had to be qualified to military standards, Bogosian said. That "has been a driving factor on both cost and schedule that the program is experiencing."

King said that while the military has asked industry to be more responsive, the Defense Department has yet to change its own processes for acquiring commercial off-the-shelf technologies.

"They say, 'We want COTS. COTS is a good thing' and as soon as you go out to buy something COTS then all the other folks in the institution ... all come out of the woodwork and say 'timeout' I've got to do all these different things to bless that product,'" King said. "Then the price and time takes off."

Bolton agreed that testing and qualification for certain COTS items need to be streamlined. During an Army aviation conference in January, he lamented the fact that the Lakota had to undergo several layers of tests even though it was based on a proven aircraft.

Bogosian said the central lesson he has learned is that the military has to be "much more astute" when it converts and integrates commercial components into military systems.

Email your comments to [e-mail]

RELATED ARTICLE: Army's vow to use proven technologies falls short.

ATLANTA--With one test flight crash, two major delays, cost overruns and Congress threatening to zero out its budget, the armed reconnaissance helicopter has been tagged with the "troubled program" label.

Troubled or not, senior Army officials have vowed to field a replacement for the aging OH-58D Kiowa Warrior scout helicopter as soon as possible. The ARH-70A delays have pushed the Kiowa retirement date back by five years to 2017.

The Army issued a "stop work" order to prime contractor Bell Helicopter Inc. earlier this year, then rescinded it allowing Bell to push on and pay for some of the development at its own risk. While doing so, it had to present a plan to the office of the secretary of defense explaining how it would put the program back on track. At the end of May, the Pentagon allowed Bell to proceed.

While Army officials have blamed the contractor for failing to meet the deadlines, the latest delay may be of the service's own making.

Col. Mark Hayes, system manager of reconnaissance/attack at the Army Training and Doctrine Command, said at a 2006 aviation conference that the program would not employ cutting-edge technology. It would use proven systems in order to meet the aggressive four-year acquisition schedule needed to replace the Kiowas. That was the case with the armaments, Honeywell International HTS900 engine, Bell 407 frame and Rockwell Collins avionics system.

But that isn't the case with FLIR Inc.'s Bright Star II sensor and targeting package, said Col. Keith Robinson, armed reconnaissance helicopter program manager. The sensor includes an advanced laser designator/rangefinder and thermal imaging system.

The latest hurdle is the building of two turrets, or balls, for FLIR's system, which includes the target acquisition sight system. One has been built, but work must be completed on a second to show that the manufacturing process can be repeated.

"FLIR is developing a new ball. It's a very advanced sensor. It's something that's very leading edge ... and we're having typical development issues," Robinson said.

He singled out the target tracker as the main problem.

Hayes, in an e-mail response to National Defense, said "Bell competed for the ARH contract with a clear set of technologies. One of these was the new FUR Bright Star II sensor, which was not yet a qualified aircraft component .... We knew this at source selection and proceeded because it was expected to be low risk and value added to ARH."

Hayes qualified his 2006 statements by saying that he was referring to unproven technologies added during the system development and demonstration phase.

"Adding a new and not yet qualified component will slow down development and could potentially hurt the overall program. Once we get into ARH production, we will always review new and emerging technologies to improve the aircraft capabilities," he said.

Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, director of Army aviation, refuted any notion that the Army changed its requirements. "There has not been one change in requirements," since the program was conceived, he told reporters.

Robinson said two balls have to show at least 85 percent of the capabilities spelled out in the requirements. Armaments integration had also not been carried out yet, he said.

The goal to equip the first ARH unit has been pushed back at least eight months and is currently set for May 2010, said Robinson.

The Army initially set a deadline to equip the first unit with 30 aircraft in September 2008. That was even sooner than the office of the secretary of defense wanted. It would have settled for summer of 2009, and as of January this year, Hayes said the Army and Bell were still on course to meet that date.

The sensor issues have pushed the so-called "limited user test" back to the fourth quarter of this year. Both Bell and the Army have refused to set a specific date. Until the aircraft passes that test, the company cannot begin low-rate production.

Paul Bogosian, program executive officer for Army aviation, said the limited user test is a critical milestone to show that the program is back on schedule.

"We will establish a baseline for cost and schedule," he said. "We will watch very carefully any deviations to that and we will respond accordingly."

Meanwhile, Bell is quick to point out the successes it achieved while simultaneously developing, integrating and building the first models.

"We have been relatively successful taking a [commercial-off-the-shelf] aircraft, converting it into a military system, and in short order, building three of them," said Bob Ellithorpe, Bell's ARH program manager.

Bell successfully passed two other tests this year. It showed the helicopter's ability to communicate with other platform and was able to load two aircraft into a C-130, then unload and prepare them for flight faster than the required 15 minutes, Ellithorpe said.

David Strong, vice president of marketing for FLIR Systems Inc., said the program is miles ahead of a typical development program that takes up to a decade to complete. "This program is way ahead of the normal cycle. We're knocking off problems right and left."

The political pressure may stem from Army officials who continue to state the urgency of replacing the Kiowa.

"We should have retired [the Kiowa] last year as far as I'm concerned," Gen. Richard Cody, Army vice chief of staff, said at the Army Aviation Association of America's annual symposium in Atlanta.

The need to put the ARH on the fast track stems from the service's inability to produce the Comanche, Cody told reporters. The Comanche would have performed the same scouting and light attack duties now performed by the Kiowa. The $39 billion program, 21 years in the making, did not produce an aircraft, and was cancelled in 2004. The United States was by then in two shooting wars without a replacement for the Kiowa.

The typical Kiowa is logging 100 flight hours per month in Iraq. Its production line was shut down years ago. When one goes down, there are none to replace it. Keeping them in the inventory poses risks for the crews, Army officials said. Safety upgrades are in the works to keep them flying until 2017, Robinson said.--STEW MAGNUSON