Overview
- The Army awarded Collins Aerospace an engineering services contract valued at up to $472 million to sustain and modernize CH-47 Chinook avionics.
- Collins will focus on keeping aging components in service and on engineering updates to cockpit, communications, navigation, and mission systems so the helicopters remain mission-capable.
- A central goal is to develop open, reusable avionics architecture that makes future capability insertions less disruptive and reduces the need for extensive rework each time new hardware or software is added.
- Work under the contract is identified for Huntsville, Alabama, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but the Army did not publish a delivery schedule or list which subsystems will be upgraded first.
- If successful, the effort should raise commonality across the Army’s aviation fleet, lower integration costs and timelines, and make upgrades easier for crews and maintenance personnel to adopt.