CH47 Chinook

[Kirkhill]

I agree and, in both cases, I think, the operational requirement originated in the office of the MND. Oh, it's true that the CF said we want strategic transports and heavy lift helicopters, but the MND of the day, Gordon O'Connor, drove the process. I think O'Connor did two things right:

    1. He secured cabinet support first and then he went and told DND to fast track it;

    2. He, and Peter MacKay, kept their cabinet colleagues, especially the President of the Treasury Board and PWGSC's minister, "on side" throughout the process.

The poor old F-35 has been allowed to become a political orphan. It doesn't really matter how good, or not so good, it might be, it lacks a political "cheering section" and that makes it constantly vulnerable.

But....

I thought the argument against the Conservatives in general and MacKay in particular were that they were deemed to be overly accepting of the F-35 and were essentially "cheerleading". 

With respect, I believe that the biggest difference between the F35 and the CH147/C17 (and the JSS-AOR) projects is the Liberals withdrew their support of the F35 project in order to differentiate themselves from the Conservatives.  A political football game ensued.

All of the projects were launched by the Liberals, in particular Paul Martin.  It can be debated whether this was the result of Conservative pressure; Martin-Manley vs Trudeau-Chretien differentiation; public outcry (at least public support) or effective military salesmanship.  It is likely, in my view, a combination of those stars aligning.

The Age of Aquarius may now have passed and the F35 is the victim of timing.

Having said that, I think Jammer is overly pessimistic.  The Liberals will beat up on the Conservatives for mismanaging the file and complain about buying too many or too few while spending too much or too little money.  At the same time I can't see Trudeau alienating Montreal and the Canadian aerospace industry by pulling a Chretien and cancelling the programme.

 

[HB_Pencil]

Frankly Journeyman, you can insult me, paint cariactures of me all you want if it makes you feel better. I deal with what I know and can prove.

If you look at Afghanistan, "normal altitudes" were not the case.  Even the Griffons have altitude problems which in turn affect the payloads they can carry.  It is not a good idea to purchase equipment that meets the minimum requirements, and then be forced to purchase again to meet the maximum, or rent from other nations equipment or support.

Absolutely... that's a concern and I'm not disputing that the Chinook probably represents the best heavy lift we can purchase. But high alt and hot weather isn't the most common situation. The question is whether this is worth the money... and if reasonable alternatives can be found. 

Maybe I should clarify what I'm getting at here because there seems to be a fair bit of confusion.

I responded to a claim that this was a model procurement project, to be emulated. I disagree. I don't think it was a disaster. Its definitely delivered an excellent capability. But this project, which is intended to purchase a capability for the Canadian forces for decades in the future, was basically forced through in a process that was generally reserved by Hillier to get equipment to the warfighter that needed it in the field.

Why is that a problem? To make the system "useful," Canada had to pay for upgrades that likely doubled the unit cost of each unit. We decided on adding in a bunch of off the shelf modifications that had never been combined on one CH-47F model. The closest one is the US Special Operations Command MH-47G, but there are additional modifications the RCAF wanted. According to the 2010 Auditor general report the actual CH-47 purchase cost $83 million per unit flyaway (page 6.6- I suspect this includes the engineering costs for the modifications)

So the math to get this is a bit complicated... and I'm not 100% sure but it should be right. If I take the DoD's SAR Cost on page 18 for 2011 its $20.77 million in 2005 dollars, which I inflated to $24.15 million for 2012.Now the US special operations command price to modify a CH-47 to the MH-47G standard (with almost all of the equipment we have on it) is 17.09 million dollars per aircraft for the 8 refurbished ones they purchased between 2011 and 2013. You get that by removing the airframe costs... because we bought new helicopters. Adding new airframes at 24.15 to 17.09 yields 41.24 million dollars. Now we add 1.09 million for the US Military's Non-recurring R&D Cost for the CH-47 airframe and 43,000 for theTA-55-GA. The process (minus the engines) seems to have gone through DCMS rather than FMS so that fee's waived.

In conclusion to purchase the Socom's MH-47G off the shelf, would have cost us $42.38 million dollars, versus $83 million for what we paid for our CH-47Fs. To put that another way... we bought a model of CH-47 that Cost double what The US Special Operations Command spent on their version that has almost all of the same things, and nearly three times the cost of the Baseline CH-47 model.  Consideration of alternatives, which people are braying for in other programs, was rejected. It was Chinook or nothing.

Absolutely the outcome was good in this case.... but its not a process that I'd emulate. What if there was a cost overrun? (then again $82 vs $42 million is a pretty big increase) or the program's capability did not meet specifications? In this project, we bought a very expensive capability that will cost alot to support over the long term. Should that not have been evaluated over other options? People thought so... within DND and even the Auditor General.

Another way of looking at it is to compare it to the CC-177. It differs significantly from the Chinook in two regards.  First, the AF was pushing for strategic lift for quite some time. There was a fair bit of consideration given towards purchasing a capability like the C-17 since the 1990s and the closing of the Lahr. It was pretty clear for 15 years that the CF needed that capability to meet its commitments in Europe and Africa. Second, the opportunity was there to get aircraft at reasonable cost and they did not require major modifications. That's a key difference between the two programs.

So that's it. Call me all the names you want, but that's my problem with the process. When the gold plating brings the cost up 100%, then I get concerns.

 

[HB_Pencil]

I'm not so sure just how "good" the project management was. Successful? Yes, indisputably, but maybe, in large part, because, as the AG noted ""For the medium- to heavy-lift helicopter, there was an absence of timely meetings, challenge, and approvals by senior boards at all key decision points in the acquisition process and before seeking Treasury Board approvals." In other words someone - almost everyone in DND and at the cabinet table - agreed that the CH-147 project was "go,' and the normal, stifling bureaucratic oversight was unnecessary and that money would not "slip to the right" as it so often does when DND's senior management is allowed to exercise its power.

That's precisely what I'm getting at. I  have no doubt that this is an excellent helicopter; we basically bought the US special forces version. Its the management of it that I have issue with.

 

[Good2Golf]

There are more costs to SOCOM's G-model upgrades than you have included.  You should add on the digitized AFCS that they are converting their current 61 aircraft fleet and you should also include the costs that they will be undertaking to retrofit an upgraded electrical system to all aircraft. 

The Auditor General's major concern was that a project definition proceeded, DND should have revised the ACAN to the 2009 status. DND ha agreed that thi approach WOs have been appropriate, as well as to have included a more detailed component estimate.

It is interesting to note, however, that the end-state costs are predicted to be $200M less than the original 2005 D-Class estimate (now called ROM-cost).  In 2005, DND estimated the full 20-year cost as $6.9B.  Current contracted costs (acqusition $1.25B, infra/FSim/init provisionig and project mgmt - $1.05B = $2.3B) plus 20-year in-service support (incl deep Maint/spares/eng sp, $2.7B) and $1.7B O&M = $6.7B.

Seems that even with the extended timelines encountered during initial definition, the auditor's numbers even predict costs below the original estimate.

Regards
G2G

 

[HB_Pencil]

There are more costs to SOCOM's G-model upgrades than you have included.  You should add on the digitized AFCS that they are converting their current 61 aircraft fleet and you should also include the costs that they will be undertaking to retrofit an upgraded electrical system to all aircraft. 

The fleet I looked at were the eight new build ones they recently procured to bring the fleet to 68 or 69... I believe it included the digitized AFCS, as the P-1 I linked states these aircraft are to the latest MH-47G standard.

I should say that this analysis is by no means perfect and would fluctuate significantly in reality: it could easily go 10 million either way. I had to extrapolate for a few things... the modifications were on CH-47F airframes without engines. I just substituted the CH-47F's flyaway in there to calculate the overall costs.

They aren't precisely equal considerations either. The Canadian CH-47 is a flyaway cost + engineering costs (as far as I can tell from the Auditor general's reports). The MH-47Gs is Flyaway + DoD fees (but we wouldn't pay for RDT&E). I also think that the entire process would have to go through FMS rather than DCMS, and that would add several million in administration fees.


Sorry for the excessive edits... I just wanted to put all of the considerations out there to make clear what I did.

 

[Good2Golf]

You're using outdated information from when the 8 aircraft were still going to be re manufactured from old D and E models.  Congress' new authorization is for completely new build aircraft, so there is no upgrade cost to an older airframe. Many of us would be very interested to see an official reference that these new build MH-47G cost ~$42M each.

When I look at a program like CH-53K with an airframe acqusition price of $133M each (see links to my earlier posting regarding what was, or was not looked at during the MHLH definition phase) I am challenged to imagine how a marginally smaller, and certainly no less complex/capable machine like an MH-47G could less than a third the equivalent unit cost.  The Canadian raw airframe numbers, at 2/3 cost of a CH-53K, are not out of line with the capability.

Perhaps your seven-year inflation model as applied on an eight-year old program reference is not as sound as you might think.

Regards
G2G

 

[Edward Campbell]

That's precisely what I'm getting at. I  have no doubt that this is an excellent helicopter; we basically bought the US special forces version. Its the management of it that I have issue with.

My problem isn't with the CH-47 project team; they had an "open field," so to speak, so they picked up the ball and ran with it. My problem is with the "normal," stifling bureaucratic processes that grew up in the 1980s - when I was closely involved in procurement - and which, as far as I can tell, have gotten worse and worse.

There were, by design, supposed to be two "hand-offs" in most projects: from the project sponsors (the requirements guys and gals who are supposed to a) define the operational requirement in sufficient details to give the engineers both clarity and some flexibility, and b secure adequate funding in the right time-frame) to the engineers and then from the engineers in DND to the procurement folks in PWGSC. Of course in a PMO it was thought that we might get everyone under one roof and make things work better even though Cyril Northcote Parkinson warned us that bigger is not always better.

It appears to me that we fumble too often: starting with the requirements guys and gals who decide that they can and should specify down to a level of exactness that makes the procurement, de facto sole source; followed by the engineers who forget that they are there to find the best, practical (which often means available) 'solution' to the operational requirements and the approved funding, not reinvent the wheel; and then by the PWGSC folks who forget that they are supposed to negotiate contracts that buy what the DND engineers specified for the available money and within the approved time-frames.

Some major projects were that were ongoing in the 1980s were reasonably well managed ~ not perfectly, by any stretch of the imagination but, roughly, on time and with only 10% or so so cost overruns; others were somewhat less successful, in one case, perhaps, because they were too "grand" to start with and because the requirements staff could never get a grip on the whole thing.

What bothered us then (us being the people at the centre of the process) and still seems, to me - from far outside the "system," to be a problem is that procurement is a political football. Now we can, as me must, live with being kicked around by cabinet, but when we kick ourselves around, when we allow service chiefs, for example, to stab one another in the back (by interfering in singe service procurements) at all those "meetings, challenge, and approvals by senior boards" that the AG regretted the Chinook project missed, then we are failing and our "system" needs an overhaul. Finally, DND appears to be being "kicked around" by both Industry Canada and PWGSC in what I'm guessing is inside the Greenbelt, internal to the CPC, politics and that means the whole of the defence procurement system needs a makeover.

I think that both the C-17 and CH-47 projects were successful precisely because they were done "outside" of the existing government project management straight jacket which, I suspect, has a large "featherbedding" component to it.

 

[tomahawk6]

The US Army in Alaska has been flying the F model for over a year now.It is well suited to the high altitude missions that it is tasked with from rescuing folks from Mt McKinley to regular support missions.

http://www.dvidshub.net/news/91773/fort-wainwright-receives-new-chinook-ch-47f-helicopters#.UdDOBj773to

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska - Fort Wainwright’s 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment, 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, known as the "Flying Dragons," received nine new CH-47F Chinook helicopters in April to upgrade the unit’s capabilities.

The unit will train on the new aircraft over several months.

"The CH-47F Chinook is the world's premier heavy-lift cargo helicopter and continues to evolve through the use of newly-updated state-of-the-art technology,” 1-52nd Aviation commander, Lt. Col. John Knightstep said.

“This will ensure that the United States military will have the most capable aircraft of this type to meet the needs of the war fighter today and well into the future,” Knightstep said. “The improvements to the CH-47F increase our pilots' ability to effectively support the ground commander in the most demanding and dangerous of conditions."

Commander of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment, Capt. Jason McCoy, said with their new technology and integrated computer systems, the Chinooks can do such things as self-adjust and maintain a hover in a one-foot radius.

“They have a moving map; it’s almost like a GPS system. You can zoom in and it will show you exactly where you want to go,” McCoy said. “And in hover mode it can take into account winds and adjust to hold in that spot.”

“This really helps with high altitudes, flying in the mountains. You can see where guys are at on the ground, circle around, put them in the GPS and come right back to them.” McCoy said. “With the hover of the one-foot radius it’s easy for us to lower the hoist and pick them up - good to go.”

The new model’s major changes are visible in the cockpit area, where many of the older model’s gauges have been replaced with digital displays.

“The improvements allow for more situational awareness while flying, it’s all digital up front, all computerized and the pilots can focus more on what’s outside the cockpit and what is around them and not worry about what’s going on inside,” said McCoy. “It’s almost like auto pilot.”

McCoy is one of the first pilots in Alaska that has completed the training and is fully certified to fly the new models. After a few more months of training, his fellow Chinook pilots and crews will also be taking to the air in their brand new helicopters.

 

[Jammer]

Bully for them.

What does that have to do with this discussion?

 

[tomahawk6]

Someone made the comment that the Chinook was unable to operate in high altitudes. Even the older models could do that.

 

[Jammer]

:facepalm: Someone who's never had the pleasure of flying over the Hindu Kush in them no doubt.

 

[tomahawk6]

There are not alot of choices for medium lift helo's,unless you buy a Russian chopper.The Chinook beats the CH-53 in most categories.

 

[HB_Pencil]

You're using outdated information from when the 8 aircraft were still going to be re manufactured from old D and E models.  Congress' new authorization is for completely new build aircraft, so there is no upgrade cost to an older airframe. Many of us would be very interested to see an official reference that these new build MH-47G cost ~$42M each.

When I look at a program like CH-53K with an airframe acqusition price of $133M each (see links to my earlier posting regarding what was, or was not looked at during the MHLH definition phase) I am challenged to imagine how a marginally smaller, and certainly no less complex/capable machine like an MH-47G could less than a third the equivalent unit cost.  The Canadian raw airframe numbers, at 2/3 cost of a CH-53K, are not out of line with the capability.

Perhaps your seven-year inflation model as applied on an eight-year old program reference is not as sound as you might think.

As I linked to the above post, I utilized the December 2011 Selected Acquisition report to Congress... the newest one available to the public on the CH-47F program. 2005 is the cost's baseline year so I had to use a cost inflator there: US programs generally use Baseline years in order to make apples to apples comparisons. I cited basically the official source  on the MH-47G with the SOCOM budget document. If you look at the link, those aircraft are stated to be new-build ones. It does not include engines and other equipment... so that variant has $26 million (Canadian CH-47F's engines were about 4 million for a set.) So there's 30 million... I can't see it being more than 40 million. But to be safe, I removed MH-47G's the airframe costs and added the CH-47F's cost. Its quite possible that the actual MH-47G's cost is less than that.

Also, the CH-53K's reoccurring flyaway cost (page 16) is $66 million in 2006 dollars for the 2019, declining to $56 million in 2020, and less after that. There isn't a DSCA levy yet, but its probably not more than 2.0 million per aircraft + the FMS fee.


Why is the cost of the Canadian CH-47H so high? Canada incurred $360 million in engineering costs that added $24 million per aircraft. For whatever reason the MH-47G version was not purchase; the modification package that Canada wanted was not available or it required further work. All of the modifications were already developed... just it had not been integrated together onto the airframe.

 

[Jammer]

By referencing American documents, you're wasting your time. US and Canadian procurments processes are very different.

The F model is virtually a brand new iteration of the Chinook...not a modified D...I say again...NOT a modified D airframe.

HB....not many of us here are aerospace engineers, or project managers so you're really beating a dead horse.

Who cares?

Should they be sent back for a fleet of JetRangers? Your looking for an argument after the fact and there's none there.

I don't think you're ever going have a need to ride in them anyway. For us who will...we're happy to have them.

 

[tomahawk6]

Sorry I evidently misread the thread,thinking that there was an argument against procuring the aircraft.

 

[Jammer]

Yeah....HB lost sharpness....meh..

 

[Good2Golf]

I did indeed read the SAR, not only for 2011, but for previous years involving the programs in question.  Making use of page 12 of the SAR, that uses 2011 Then-Year (TY) dollars as well as the 2005 $BY figures, is the more appropriate way to inflate figures as TY dollars use the USG's own inflation model, not your own.  Arithmetic using page 12 (full program and airframe deliveries) provides one with an full airframe cost of $26.8M per aircraft, not your $24.15M.  Something you didn't do was analyze the full cost of GFE to the CH-47F program.  Yes, you mentioned the engines, but you used DSCA's non-recurring cost entirely out of context.  A Lycoming T55-GA-714A is NOT just $42,412 for an FMS customer such as Canada...it cost a lot more than a fully loaded Toyota Camry.  Those are amortized aggregate sunk costs to DoD.  Also, don't forget all the other USG GFE that isn't included in the airframe production costs.  Radios, Avionics, Nav systems, EW and protective eqpt, etc...

If we used those DSCA figures as you have done, then you're right, we paid too much for our Chinooks. In fact, we should sell them and get some of those $20.8M CV-22B special ops Ospreys!!!

While we're at it, we could also pick up some F-35As for $11.8M and F135-PW-100 engines for $1.1M each...$12.9M per F35?  What a deal!  That sounds a lot better than what the media says we'll be paying... 

It goes without saying that there is a danger in using monetary figures out of context...   


Anyway, if you had wanted to delve deeper into how Canadian Chinook costs related to other related Chinook fleets, I'm curious as to why you didn't look at any of the foreign military sale cases listed on page 19 of the very 2011 SAR to which you referred, at least to give some relative perspective?  This would have given you a much more realistic figure for how much a baseline CH-47F costs to a international customer?  UAE, $37.4M.  Turkey, $42.0M.  Australia, $35.6M.  These are all for standard cargo CH-47Fs that would not be suited to providing the capability that Cabinet authorized DND to procure.  Add on the capabilities that Canada has, as well as all the RDT&E and other initial parts and systems provisioning that is included with our Chinooks, and it is not unreasonable to see the unit equivalent prices associated with the CH-147F.   

As for my previous comments regarding the CH-53K unit cost of $133M per copy, I used the 2011 SAR on CH-53K, specifically page 11, and divided total program costs of $26,626.8M by 200 airframes = $133.134M/per ac.  That is the exact same methodology as the OAG used to determine the $83M/ac cost ($1,245M / 15 ac) in the Fall 2010 report - so we're talking Macintoshes to Granny Smiths (i.e. both apples, just different taste). 

When the 2012 or 2013 SAR is released for the MH-47G, you will no doubt be able to see how much the new-build MH-47Gs will cost.  There were no new-build MH-47Gs included in the 2011 SAR, only rebuild equivalents from previous D and E-model MHs.  PM Cargo, MG Crosby, is on public record (2012 and 2013 Quad-A public presentations) that the new-build MH-47Gs will be leveraged using the CH-47F's machined monolithic airframes, just as the Canadian CH-147F was, and that those MH-47Gs may very well use the advanced technology that the CH-147F does.  Those program costs have yet to be provided publicly by DoD, but when they do, you will find that the same methodology as that I used in the preceding paragraph for the CH-53K, will stand one in good stead for determining the true overall costs, which as we can see, are notably higher than when other figures are cherry-picked out of the source document's context.

In the end, the project will deliver 15 state-of-the-art heavy-lift helicopters that will serve Canada well for at least the next fifth of a century.  If will also do so at a cost 1/5 of a billion dollars less ($6.7B) than the original 2006 estimate of $6.9B noted in OAG report (para 6.67).

Regards
G2G

 

[AirDet]

Sorry I evidently misread the thread,thinking that there was an argument against procuring the aircraft.

That makes two of us. The Chin Hook is a proven workhorse like the Seaking. All we need now is an attack helo to round out our capabilities

 

[UnwiseCritic]

That makes two of us. The Chin Hook is a proven workhorse like the Seaking. All we need now is an attack helo to round out our capabilities

Yes, will we get. No. If we do it will be ten years too late... Even Australia has attack helicopters.

 

[CBH99]

The Australians also manage their defence budget a LOT differently/more effectively than we do.