Marine Corps struggling to keep helicopter costs in check

The head of the Marine Corps said Wednesday the service is working with Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky to reduce the price of the CH-53K helicopter.

The heavy-lift helicopter is on track to surpass the F-35 as the Pentagon’s costliest aircraft.

“Obviously we’re concerned about the cost point,” Marine Corps Commandant Robert Neller told reporters following remarks he made at a conference sponsored by Credit Suisse and McAleese and Associates.

{mosads}“We’re focused right now on the performance. But the price is an issue. We’ll continue to work with the vendor to work that down obviously.”

The CH-53K — which is still in development — will replace the Marine Corps’s aging CH-53E helicopters. The CH-53K was initially expected to cost $95 million per unit.

But the program came under scrutiny earlier this month from Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.), ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee’s subpanel on air and land forces, who pointed out that the cost is expected to grow 22 percent, to $122 million per helicopter.

“The Marine Corps intends to buy 200 of this aircraft, so that cost growth, multiplied times 200, is a heck of a lot of money,” Tsongas said at a March 10 hearing. “Even if there is no additional cost growth, it seems worth pointing out that $122 million per aircraft in 2006 dollars exceeds the current cost of an F-35A aircraft for the Air Force by a significant margin.”

Neller said the Marines are early in the CH-53K program and potential foreign buyers could help bring the cost down.

President Trump has taken personal interest in the cost of military equipment in the past, bashing the F-35 program as too expensive both on the campaign trail and in December tweets, and he recently took credit for driving the price down.

The head of Lockheed Martin said Tuesday said that Trump “absolutely did contribute” to the company’s speedy deal on and reduced cost of the F-35s.

“We were in discussions … and he helped accelerate that along, and I think he put a sharper focus on price and how we would drive the price down,” Hewson told reporters at a Lockheed media event in Arlington, Va. “So he absolutely did contribute to us getting to closure on that.”