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Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc. in Fort Worth, TX received a $137.4 million firm-fixed-price, fixed-price-incentive fee contract for the fiscal year 2006 low rate initial production (LRIP) lot III procurement of 7 UH-1Y aircraft, 1 UH-1Y full flight simulator, and 4 composite maintenance trainers (Phase I) under the H-1 upgrade program. Work will be performed in Hurst, TX (80%), and Amarillo, TX (20%), and is expected to be complete in September 2008. This contract was not competitively procured by the Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, MD (N00019-06-C-0086).
As DID has noted, the H-1 upgrade program to remanufacture 100 of the Marines’ old UH-1N Hueys and 180 of its AH-1W SuperCobra attack helicopters into advanced UH-1Y Venoms and AH-1Z Vipers with strong parts commonality has run into some problems. In May 2005, the Navy warned Bell that the H-1 program was in serious jeopardy because the Texas-based company has been failing to meet its needs, reserved the option of killing the program, and demanded “fundamental changes.”