CRH DAB Meeting

The Pentagon's top acquisition official is scheduled to review the Air Force's Combat Rescue Helicopter program today -- a meeting that could determine whether the service can push the program forward into the engineering and manufacturing development phase.

Inside the Pentagon last week previewed the meeting:

A Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) review of CRH is slated for June 18, according to a schedule obtained by InsideDefense.com, and could pave the way for a milestone B decision. Three previous DABs planned for July, October and December of last year were postponed, caught in the budget limbo created by sequestration.

The CRH program would replace the service's current search-and-rescue helicopter fleet, which is composed of Sikorsky HH-60Gs. The new helicopter's design will be modeled after the UH-60M and will feature composite rotor blades and other more modernized systems like an improved gearbox. But the primary discriminator between CRH and the older-model Black Hawks will be the unique avionics required for the rescue mission. The Air Force plans to buy 112 of the new airframes.

The service did not request funding for CRH in fiscal year 2015, but announced in early March that it plans to use $334 million in FY-14 funds to move forward on the program. A contract is expected this summer -- it could come as soon as this month -- and will kick off what the service says will be a relatively slow development phase in order to stretch those funds across two fiscal years. The program is expected to cost another $430 million between FY-14 and FY-19.