Air Force Global Strike Command is interested in increasing the service life of its Vietnam War-era UH-1N Huey helicopters—that protect the nation’s ICBM fields—by an additional 30 years, while still maintaining the helicopters’ mission-capability rate. Towards that end, Air Force officials issued a request for information to industry on April 17 to identify potential companies capable of increasing the aircraft’s endurance, range, speed, all-weather capability, and survivability. In addition, the service would like to see modernized communication and navigation systems put on the venerable helos. The service is interested in addressing at least some of these issues between Fiscal 2014 and Fiscal 2018, according to the solicitation. Members of industry have until the end of April to provide their feedback. (See Entering Unchartered Territory from the Daily Report archives.)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…