GAO: USAF Erred on CSAR-X Maintenance Costs

As a part of its ruling sustaining Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin’s protests, the GAO said the Air Force’s method of calculating life-cycle costs among the three CSAR-X contenders wasn’t the one it outlined in its request for proposals. Specifically, the service used a standard cost, $591.4 million, to estimate the labor needed to support the new aircraft through their planned service lives. That didn’t sufficiently consider variations among the contenders, which differ significantly in size and design. Further, the labor estimate was based on the cost of supporting the USAF’s current HH-60Gs, whose maintenance hours per flight hour is double or more the requirement specified by the service for the new CSAR aircraft, the GAO said. For related news