U.S. Navy moves to keep MH-60 Sea Hawk flying through 2050

The U.S. Navy is moving ahead with a modernization program for its MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter fleet, naming the industry teams that will design a new open-architecture avionics system meant to keep the aircraft flying through 2050.

The MH-60 looks like a Black Hawk and shares its airframe lineage, but the naval variants have been built and adapted for entirely different missions at sea. The MH-60R flies antisubmarine warfare, surface warfare, electronic warfare, and command and control missions. The MH-60S handles antisurface warfare, combat search and rescue, special warfare support, and airborne mine countermeasures.

The H-60 Multi-Mission Helicopter program office is leading the effort, working jointly with the Royal Australian Navy. The program, called the MH-60 Tailorable Architecture Leveraging Open Systems prototype project, will modernize the helicopter’s avionics and mission system architecture while addressing what the Navy described as multiple obsolescence issues in current systems.

The government is using an other transaction agreement, managed through the Naval Aviation Systems Consortium, to bring in industry partners across three roles rather than issuing a single traditional contract.

Sierra Nevada Corp will design the physical and structural integration for the MH-60S variant as lead aircraft integrator. Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems will do the same work for the MH-60R variant.

Rockwell Collins and Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems were named segment lead integrators for the flight critical avionics segment and the digital backbone system, responsible for hardware and software architecture design, interface management, and system-level software integration.

Technology Security Associates Inc. will serve as the open system verification demonstration third-party integrator, supporting government assessment of how the segment integrators apply a modular open systems approach across the avionics segment and digital backbone system.

None of these selections constitute formal contract or agreement awards. Each remains contingent on successful negotiation and finalization of Phase 1 statements of work.

The program is structured in two phases. Phase 1 covers preliminary design of the flight critical avionics segment and digital backbone system, establishment of a collaborative digital engineering environment, and characterization of the baseline aircraft through physical integration, structural modification, A-kit fabrication, and preparation for aircraft-level testing. Phase 2 covers prototype development and verification.

The Navy said the modular open systems approach is intended to let the MH-60 fleet respond to emerging threats and adapt to new fleet requirements without the cost and lead time of a traditional avionics overhaul. Officials also said the digital engineering practices used on the program are meant to support future vertical lift development through a portable open core architecture that could apply beyond the MH-60 fleet.