Appropriators give lifeline to helicopter program
Additional funding could keep the VH-71 alive and its workforce largely intact as the Pentagon reviews plans for fielding a new presidential helicopter.
House and Senate negotiators on the fiscal 2010 Defense Appropriations bill reached an agreement on a final version Friday afternoon, which includes a compromise that will keep the VH-71 presidential helicopter program on life support despite the Obama administration's decision to cancel it.
The final measure, which will come to the House floor next week, will include over $100 million for the chopper, said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., whose district includes the Lockheed Martin Corp. facility in Owego, N.Y., where the helicopter is assembled.
"Although I was not able to achieve my complete objective, which was to fully continue all aspects of Lockheed Martin's Increment 1 presidential helicopter, this funding will save about 250 jobs in Owego that would have been lost without it," Hinchey said in a statement issued Friday evening.
"The funding included in the conference agreement will help ensure that $1 billion already spent to develop the necessary mission systems technology for the next presidential helicopter does not go to waste," he said.
Hinchey, a member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee who had been working to save the program, added that the money in the conference agreement will allow "continuation of the mission systems work" on the helicopter.
The administration had requested $85 million for the troubled program, whose severe cost overruns and schedule delays made it the poster child for problems plaguing the Pentagon acquisition system. All of the money would have paid termination fees owed the contractor.
The Senate-passed defense spending bill included only the funds requested to terminate the program. But defying a veto threat from the White House, the House passed a bill with an added $400 million to make operational five initial "Increment 1" helicopters, the earliest models to come off the assembly line. The allocation reflected the panel's concerns that the military already had invested $3.2 billion in the program.
"We're trying to figure out how to get some benefit from the money that's already been spent" on the program, House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., said after a closed-door conference meeting Friday.
The additional funding could keep the VH-71 alive and its workforce largely intact as the Pentagon reviews plans for fielding a new presidential helicopter. The military could also opt to make additional investments in the helicopters to make them compatible with other aircraft in its fleet.
In its Statement of Administration Policy, the White House threatened to veto the spending bill if it "includes funds that continue the existing VH-71 program, or would prejudge the plan to re-compete the presidential helicopter program."
But it is unclear if the funding in the conference bill would be enough to trigger a veto, particularly if the measure serves as the vehicle for a package of unrelated provisions, including an increase to the debt limit and a jobs initiative, that Democratic leaders want passed before the end of this year's session.