Pending V-22 Contract

The Defense Department is just days away from awarding a Bell-Boeing team a new contract to provide performance-based logistics and supply chain management services for the V-22 Osprey, Boeing officials said today.

Bell-Boeing, the Osprey tiltrotor's manufacturing team, is already working under a PBL arrangement that covers touch labor, spares and repair services, tech publication updates and a variety of other support activities known as Phase 1 of the V-22’s sustainment, and the companies are now in the fourth year of that five-year framework. But DOD and the companies have reached a "handshake" agreement to add supply chain and obsolescence management to that portfolio, Marty Anderson, Boeing’s V-22 sustainment director, told reporters at a company aircraft modification facility in Millville, NJ, this morning.

Those supply chain and obsolescence-management activities will be covered under a new deal known as the V-22's Phase 2 PBL, and its period of performance is set to begin this Saturday, Sept. 1. It is slated to run until December 2016, for a full duration of 51 months, and DOD and Bell-Boeing plan to extend the Phase 1 contract to cover that same time period, Anderson said. He added that the new agreement would provide demand forecasting and warehousing services, among a handful of new capabilities not covered under Phase 1.

Boeing officials declined to discuss the value of the Phase 2 contract, but its details could be revealed this week if the contract is signed by Friday as expected. Both PBL arrangements will cover logistical support for all of the V-22s in the field, regardless of operating service.

The vast majority of delivered Ospreys, 154 out of 181, are owned by the Marine Corps, and 26 are owned and operated by the Air Force, primarily its special operations forces. The remaining V-22 is used as a technology demonstrator.

For more information on the V-22’s forthcoming PBL announcement and details on Boeing’s plan to improve the quality and cost of Osprey sustainment into the future, be sure to check Friday’s issue of Inside the Air Force.