Boeing is currently negotiating a third multiyear
contract with the Defense Department that would extend deliveries of the V-22
Osprey to 2024, a company executive said March 22.
"We're looking
forward to a Multiyear 3 contract that would be awarded in December of '17,"
said Rick Lemaster, director of V-22 tilt-rotor global sales and marketing for
vertical lift programs at Boeing. "That would be for a five-year period,
essentially FY18 through FY22, and then the deliveries would go on out through
2024."
In 2008 the Naval Air Systems Command awarded the first multiyear
procurement contract to Bell Boeing, covering V-22 purchases from 2008-2012. In
2013, the Navy signed a second multiyear contract for production of the
tilt-rotor aircraft, which is jointly manufactured by Boeing and Bell
Helicopter. That contract authorized the purchase of 99 V-22s from 2013 through
2017 — 92 MV-22s going to the Marine Corps and seven CV-22s going to Air Force
special operations forces. It also included an option for up to 23 additional
aircraft. The multiyear resulted in a total cost savings of about $1 billion,
according to Boeing.
Over the summer Boeing will work with both the Navy
and the Marine Corps to discuss the quantities that the services would purchase
as part of a five-year production buy, he told National Defense at the Boeing
facility in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, where the fuselage for the V-22 is
built.
The company is hoping to reach quantities and cost savings similar
to what was achieved through the second multiyear contract, which would enable
Boeing to produce aircraft at the current rate of about 19 to 20 per
year.
To meet that production rate, Boeing is looking at both new
domestic and international opportunities — in addition to what the Navy and
Marine Corps plan to purchase — to fill the gap, Lemaster said.
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