U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy warned the secretary of the U.S. Army that Congress could limit funds for a Bell aircraft to replace the Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter, after a history of cost overruns with the Bell V-22 Osprey which pioneered tilt-rotor technology that the new Bell aircraft duplicates.

Stratford-based Sikorsky lost a challenge last month of the Army's choice of the Bell V-280 Valor under the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program, which would inherit many of the missions performed by the Black Hawk today. FLRAA is the first major contract awarded as part of the larger Future Vertical Lift program of the U.S. Department of Defense spanning aircraft and drones.

The Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force use the Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter then swivels its rotors forward 90 degrees to provide thrust like an airplane. 

Last week, an Air Force official told the House Armed Services Committee that it is considering the Bell V-280 Valor as a long-range aircraft to rescue pilots downed in the Asia-Pacific region, even as Sikorsky builds a new fleet of Jolly Green II helicopters in Stratford that the Air Force envisions for combat rescue missions in the Middle East and Europe.

From his perch on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense — and admitting to a "parochial interest" in Sikorsky's success with potentially thousands of jobs at stake in Connecticut — Murphy directed his questions on Tuesday to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth during a Tuesday hearing on the Army's 2024 budget priorities.

Murphy cited data that the Osprey, which Bell co-developed with Boeing, has had a "mission readiness" rate in his words of 56 percent over the last five years, well below the 82 percent baseline it was expected to surpass. He said each Osprey aircraft costs $100 million today, triple its price when it first entered service more than 15 years ago.

"My understanding is that past performance did not factor into the contract award," Murphy said Tuesday on Capitol Hill. "Tilt-rotor aircraft like the V-22 Osprey have a pretty miserable performance, reliability and safety record over the last 30 years."

The Pentagon has no plans to purchase more Ospreys, according to Military.com, with an unspecified number of aircraft grounded in February on gear clutch issues. Originally aiming for a fleet of 1,000 aircraft, the Marines, Navy and Air Force ended up acquiring less than 500 across the three branches.

The Osprey's development took 15 years longer than expected according to the Government Accountability Office, as Bell and Boeing worked to overcome technical problems and crashes of early prototypes. In a 2009 report, a GAO report stated the Osprey performed well in initial operations in Iraq, but that commanders had limited it to "low threat theater" missions, opting for helicopters for demanding missions in combat zones.

Sikorsky and Boeing designed their Defiant-X for combat maneuverability — promising vast improvements over the Black Hawk — and better speed as well, though not matching the V-280 Valor for cruising speed and range. Sikorsky and parent Lockheed Martin continue to tout the co-axial rotor concept that they have designed into the proposed Raider-X as an armed scout helicopter for the Army, including in a video posted late last month showcasing the helicopter.

Murphy focused his Tuesday comments on cost and reliability, without pressing Wormuth on any strategic and tactical differences between the Bell V-280 Valor and the Sikorsky-Boeing Defiant-X in the context of the Asia-Pacific region, as the Air Force official had referenced in the House Armed Services Committee hearing last week.

“The bid that came in from Textron was twice — twice — the amount of the bid that came in from Sikorsky," Murphy said. "Layer on top of that this history suggesting that a tilt-rotor is going to end up costing our taxpayers inordinately more than even the initial bids, and I worry that we're going to have a hard time being able to fund the full cost of this award.”

Wormuth responded that the Army had greater concern over the technical risk reflected in the Sikorsky-Boeing proposal, with GAO reporting last month the companies did not appear to have provided the level of detail for "modular open architecture" — making it easier to swap in upgraded systems as technologies evolve — that the Army had specified as a contract requirement.

"One of the reasons, as I understand it, that we selected the Bell-Textron aircraft was because it was assessed to have lower technical risk -- even though the bid that came in from Sikorsky from an overall dollar amount was lower," Wormuth said during the Senate subcommittee hearing. "It was a best-value competition  —  it wasn't strictly based on price — and we in the Army had considerable concerns about our visibility into the design process that came from Sikorsky."

Wormuth did not provide further detail immediately in response to Murphy's question on how the Army factored in past performance of the Osprey program in the decision to go back to Bell for another tilt-rotor.