Proposed congressional cuts to the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter and Joint Cargo Aircraft programs pose the biggest challenge to the Army as it works to keep Comanche cancellation dollars in a pot earmarked for aviation, according to Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, the Army Aviation Task Force director.

During a July 18 roundtable with reporters, Mundt said recent hits in the fiscal year 2007 defense spending bills to the ARH and JCA programs could lead to a “piranha feeding frenzy.”

More specifically, the 2004 termination of the Army's Comanche helicopter program left the Army with roughly $14.6 billion it planned to spend on developing and fielding the helicopter in fiscal years 2004 through 2011 to “restructure and revitalize” the service's aviation program.

At the time the decision was made, Congress, the president, the Office of Management and Budget and Army leadership agreed that the money would be reinvested in Army aviation -- including new-start programs such as ARH, JCA and the Light Utility Helicopter, Mundt told reporters.

And although proposed cuts to the JCA and ARH -- totaling close to $200 million -- aren't so bad on their own, Mundt said they could start a downward spiral.

“You're talking current year dollars right now, what does that $200 million grow into?” Mundt asked. “It is like a piranha feeding frenzy. The minute you cut money from something, a little blood gets in the water and everybody goes after that thing.”

At the time Mundt spoke, House appropriators had stripped $91 million from President Bush's $141.4 million dollar request to buy ARH platforms but left JCA intact, while the Senate authorization bill included a $109 million hit to the JCA.

Mundt told ITA last month that the House appropriators' ARH mark -- which included a $20 million hit in the research, development, test and evaluation budget line -- could delay the program by up to two years. On the JCA side, the reduction would “automatically” slip the program's schedule by two years, he said last week.

And with the schedule slips, the one-star told reporters, program costs could soar.

“It is like a self-licking ice cream cone. If you take money out of the program, you have to increase the schedule, because you can't buy everything you want within the same time frame,” Mundt said. “If you increase the schedule, you increase the cost. . . . It's kind of like a sale, if you don't buy it today, it doesn't get cheaper tomorrow.”

Two days after the roundtable, on July 20, Senate appropriators passed their defense bill and took another lick at ARH and JCA -- cutting $39.6 million and $109 million, respectively.

In total, the committee cut $9 billion from the defense bill, and a congressional staffer told ITA last week that programs that were not on schedule or meeting their milestones were prime targets for reductions.

Accordingly, in a report on the bill, lawmakers said they cut ARH funding because the program is “currently behind schedule” due to “slower than required staff buildup, the late release of drawings and lack of parts to support the aircraft build plan.” To mitigate schedule risk by allowing for more “moderate” production, lawmakers voted to decrease the of number aircraft procured in FY-07 from 12 platforms to six.

Last month, ITA spoke with Mundt, who said he has visited lawmakers on Capitol Hill to defend the ARH program's aggressive schedule.

Some lawmakers, he said at the time, are concerned about the risk associated with integrating the HTS-900-1 engine and common avionics architecture system cockpit into the militarized version of the Bell 407 single engine light helicopter made by Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc.

“Any time you start doing integration you can run into issues,” Mundt told ITA, but he added it was a risk the service accepted when the contract was awarded.

Additionally, the service announced last week that the ARH completed its first flight and successfully flew in a traffic pattern reaching 80 knots, 500 foot altitude, with banks up to 30 degrees for a little more than 1.5 hours of flight.

On the JCA front, Senate appropriators last week said they stripped $109 million from the program because they believe it is “premature” to procure these platforms until a “further analysis of the joint intra-theater airlift mission requirement is completed and the Army and the Air Force develop a joint concept of operations that details how these aircraft will be employed,” concerns that were echoed by Senate authorizers.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon directed the Army and Air Force to work together to develop a joint program after the services identified similar requirements but pursued them separately. The Army called its program the Future Cargo Aircraft, and the Air Force called its the Light Cargo Aircraft program.

To date, the services have crafted a Pentagon-approved joint acquisition strategy, drawn up a memorandum of agreement signed by the service vice-chiefs and solicited proposals.

During a June 2 roundtable, Mundt told reporters he has visited lawmakers to assure them that a joint requirement for the platform exists and that the Air Force has accepted the Army's analysis of alternatives. Some of the confusion over whether a joint requirement exists stems from an Air Force-led joint capabilities based analysis to help determine how many aircraft each service will purchase, “this is a numbers issue, not a requirements issue,” Mundt said.

More specifically, the Army has a requirement for 145 aircraft, but the ongoing analysis could alter the number, Air Force Brig. Gen. Andy Dichter, deputy director for joint integration, said during a March 17 media roundtable.

The congressional staffer who spoke to ITA July 21 said Senate appropriators are concerned that the services are investing in the JCA fleet before the number of aircraft to be procured is determined.

ARH and JCA were not the only aviation programs born out of the Comanche termination to receive cuts from Senate appropriators.

The president's budget requested $199 million to buy Light Utility Helicopters, an off-the-shelf fleet designed to free up heavily used UH-60 Black Hawks for combat operations and replace the UH-1 Huey in the National Guard.

But Senate appropriators voted last week to shave $107.5 million from the program, leaving $91 million to buy 16 aircraft next year, 23 helicopters below the request.

“Over the past two fiscal years, Congress has appropriated [$94.6 million] for two LUH initial procurement lots totaling 16 airframes. However, the initial production contract, planned for award in January 2005 was not awarded until June 30,” the committee wrote in its report on the bill.

Due to the delay and concerns about the ability to crank out three production lots in less than 15 months, lawmakers wrote, the LUH reduction is intended to provide more time for the program to increase production in a “more measured approach” and for the Army to demonstrate the platform's reliability.

Additionally, an amendment to the bill called “Army Helicopter Engine Efficiencies,” encourages the Pentagon to consider using the ARH engine for the LUH platform, the same engine that Mundt said lawmakers considered a risky part of the ARH program.

“The committee is strongly supportive of the department's efforts to increase cost efficiencies in the supply chain and to reduce total life cycle costs through the selection of interchangeable systems, subsystems and components,” Senate appropriators wrote.

“The committee believes this effort makes operational and financial sense and is advised the ARH engine can help achieve desired results. Accordingly, the committee encourages the department to consider utilizing this engine in the LUH program,” they added.

Last month, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company North American Defense of Arlington, VA, was selected to produce the service's LUH fleet, a program valued at $3 billion. The aircraft is intended to be used by first responders, and a total of 322 platforms will be procured beginning in FY-07.

Although the Army's new-start aviation platforms have incurred hits as lawmakers craft their defense bills, two veteran fleets received dollars above the president's request in the Senate appropriations bill. Lawmakers added $39 million for UH-60 Black Hawk modifications and $3 million for AH-64 Apache modifications.