Sikorsky, US Army agree deal to keep Black Hawk production running past 2027

Sikorsky and the US Army have agreed a contract that keeps UH-60 Black Hawk production going through at least 2028. The Pentagon announced the award on 17 September for 16 UH-60Ms at a total cost of $356 million.

The figure is small next to the roughly 2,300 Black Hawks the army operates, but the deal matters to Sikorsky, where the UH-60 is a central part of the business. The previous multi-year production contract, which supplied new UH-60Ms to the army and to Foreign Military Sales buyers, had been due to finish in mid-2027. That left the prospect of a revenue gap.

The new agreement is not a full multi-year production contract. Sikorsky general manager Rich Benton said the order will not necessarily stay at 16 aircraft. If more demand or funding appears within six months, that number could grow within the same first year of production. Benton said the structure lets the company add aircraft quickly for either the US Army or FMS customers.

When the army signed the earlier multi-year deal in 2022, it indicated that order would be its last for the Black Hawk, which entered service in the 1980s. Sikorsky has spent several years negotiating a follow-on multi-year contract that would extend UH-60M output to 2032. By then it hopes to have new products on the market, including the autonomous Nomad rotor-blown wing and the uncrewed U-Hawk cargo aircraft.

The contract announced in September gives the company a route to keep producing the helicopter and to sustain the 55,000 US workers in the rotorcraft's supply chain.