SecAF James OKs Combat Rescue Helicopter; T-X Trainer, Weather Sat, JSTARs Also Funded

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/03/secaf-james-oks-combat-rescue-helicopter-t-x-trainer-weather-sat-jstars-also-funded/



SecAF James OKs Combat Rescue Helicopter; T-X Trainer, Weather Sat, JSTARs Also Funded
By Colin Clark on March 04, 2014 at 6:21 PM

PENTAGON: In a dramatic last-minute budget decision, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James today approved the long-delayed purchase of a Combat Rescue Helicopter (CRH).

The announcement was slipped into today’s Air Force budget briefing by Maj. Gen. James Martin, Air Force budget director. Martin said he was told about James’ decision as he walked down the hall to the Pentagon briefing room to unveil the Air Force budget. No money has been allocated to the program, an Air Force spokeswoman told us after Martin’s briefing here, so the funding will have to come from somewhere else in the service’s $138 billion budget request. “A contract will be awarded this year,” he said.

Breaking Defense readers will remember the ill-fated $10 billion CSAR-X program, which Boeing won only to lose when then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates killed it, questioning whether it should be built and bought by a single service. When the program was against put out for bid, only Sikorsky placed a bid for the 112 helicopter program, with other companies saying they just couldn’t make money on the it. Sikorsky plans to replace the aging Pave Hawk helicopters.

Some 74 members of Congress wrote Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in December, urging him to fund CRH in the 2015 budget. He and James appear to have agreed.