Friday Apr 26, 2013 | 10:40 UTC

Surion: Eurocopter’s Korean KHP/KUH Helicopter Deal

KHP/Surion rollout

South Korea currently owns around 700 helicopters, but more than half are considered outdated, and they need to be replaced. December 2005 marked the endgame for a South Korean competition to produce about 245 utility transport helicopters, which would be developed and produced as a semi-indigenous program. The KHP/ Surion is in the 8-tonne class, and is designed to carry 11 troops. Industrial offsets were also important, as the program is designed to boost Korea’s ability to design and build its own rotary-wing aircraft. EADS Eurocopter was chosen as the cooperating partner.

The Korean government gave its final approval of the contract in June 2006, and the project is underway. Note that while company releases place the program’s value at $6-8 billion, the program hasn’t reached that level yet. The initial contract was for KRW 1.3 trillion ($1.3 billion), and is for research and development only. That development finished in April 2013, and the main production contract is next. It will proceed in parallel with additional contracts to develop Surion specialty versions for Korea’s federal police and Marine Corps, and all of these models will be offered for export through a joint venture with Eurocopter.

Rapid Fire April 26, 2013: Decent Quarter for Primes Shouldn’t Hide Industry Diversity

• Raytheon’s Q1 2013 sales were down by 1% Y/Y to %5.88B. The backlog lost 2.2% from a year ago, to $33.5B. Missile systems performed best (+8%) while network centric systems decreased by 7%.
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• Overall US prime contractors had an OK quarter, and they now acknowledge that sequestration will take time to sink in. On the other hand companies focused on selling relatively mundane services to the Department of defense are facing a tougher outlook.

• Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall finalized [PDF] his Better Buying Power 2.0 directive. The call to action: “All ACAT I – III programs should have should cost targets in place by August 1, 2013, or the next milestone decision, whichever comes first.”

• Frank Kendall also wants to search for overlap between programs and reduce product redundancy. A recent consolidation example can be found in the Project Manager, Night Vision/Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition (PM NV/RSTA) canceling a planned industry day for its Gunshot Detection System (GDS), redirecting instead to the Hostile Fire Detection (HFD) effort from RDECOM CERDEC Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD).

• The US National Defense University’s INSS research arm published a paper on Chinese threat and retaliation signaling and its implications for a Sino-American military confrontation [PDF].

• Two problems with India’s pursuit of alleged corruption in its AW101 VVIP helicopter deal. First, despite all the threats and legal strikes, they haven’t found anything yet. Botched artillery acquisitions have shown this doesn’t necessarily stop the ministry from blacklisting firms anyway, but pulling that on Finmeccanica would be a serious problem for India’s Navy and IAF. The 2nd problem: they’re about to run out of flyable VVIP helicopters.

• What does US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Greenert mean when he talks about a “kill chain”? His quick explanation in the video below. This perspective was already showing a few years ago in guidance [PDF] from his predecessor Gary Roughead.