U.S. Army orders up to 12 more UH-72B Lakota helicopters

Airbus Helicopters Inc. has been awarded a $115.4 million contract to build up to 12 more UH-72B Lakota helicopters for the U.S. Army, the Department of War announced Aug. 14.

The contract covers the helicopters themselves, designated the MBB-BK 117 D3, along with jettisonable cockpit doors, air conditioning system installation, engine inlet barrier filters and program management. The action obligates $115,406,740 now, with a cumulative value of $140,716,352 if the Army exercises additional options. The Army solicited the contract online and received one bid.

Fiscal 2024 and 2025 Army aircraft procurement funds cover the initial obligation. The contract lists Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, as the place of performance, with an estimated completion date of Dec. 31, 2030. Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal is the contracting activity, under contract number W58RGZ-26-C-0020. Airbus builds Lakota helicopters at a separate production facility in Columbus, Mississippi, where the company employs a workforce that includes a significant share of military veterans.

The Army awarded the first Lakota contract in 2006, choosing what was then Eurocopter’s EC145, a commercial twin-engine helicopter, as its new light utility platform under a commercial off-the-shelf acquisition strategy intended to avoid separate research and development costs. Airbus, which acquired Eurocopter, went on to build 463 of the original UH-72A variant for the Army, Army National Guard and, for a time, the U.S. Navy, before production shifted to the newer UH-72B model.

In 2013, the Army restructured its aviation fleet and selected the Lakota as its primary rotary-wing training helicopter, retiring the older TH-67 Creek in the process. AgustaWestland, a Leonardo subsidiary that had hoped to compete for a training helicopter contract, challenged the Army’s sole-source approach to the decision in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims; Airbus retained the training role. The Lakota has since become the initial platform for Army helicopter pilots at Fort Rucker, Alabama, logging more than 800,000 training flight hours there with no fatal mishaps, according to Airbus.

The Army unveiled the UH-72B variant in August 2020 and delivered the first aircraft to the Army National Guard in September 2021, the initial delivery in a batch of 18 aircraft ordered at the time. The UH-72B is based on the commercial H145 helicopter and adds a five-blade main rotor, a Fenestron shrouded tail rotor, Safran Arriel 2E engines and the Airbus Helionix avionics suite, changes the Army has said come without added government research and development costs under the program’s commercial-derivative structure.

Beyond training, the Lakota fleet flies search and rescue, medical evacuation, disaster response, homeland defense and drug interdiction missions across 49 states and territories, and ranks as the Army’s third-largest rotary-wing fleet by aircraft count.

National Guard Lakota crews flew roughly 14,000 hours during a 2023 rotation supporting Southwest border operations, a pace Airbus has said approaches combat deployment tempos for the airframe. Combined Army, Army National Guard and former Navy operations have logged more than 1.6 million total flight hours on the Lakota fleet.