The U.S. Air Force is looking into an electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) system upgrade for the MH-139A Grey Wolf helicopter by Boeing and Leonardo.

The MH-139A program office “is conducting market research to identify sources capable of providing a significant upgrade to the current MH-139A EO/IR system,” Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio’s Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) said in a Thursday business notice.

“The objective of this effort is to upgrade the EO/IR capability and add cabin displays, allowing special mission aviators to operate the system and coordinate imagery directly with security forces,” according to to AFLCMC.

The current EO/IR system on the MH-139A is the FLIR Star SAFIRE 380HDc by Teledyne Technologies‘ Teledyne FLIR subsidiary. The latter was previously FLIR Systems, which merged with Teledyne in 2021.

AFLCMC said that “a depot-level payload upgrade” to the existing EO/IR system is a “known baseline solution” but that the MH-139A program “is open to equivalent commercial/military EO/IR turrets that meet the payload requirements, fit within the existing structural mounts, and can be integrated via a USAF time compliance technical order.”

For the EO/IR upgrade, the MH-139A program wants mid-wave and short-wave IR “high-fidelity imaging to identify obscured targets and view objects through haze, dust, smoke, and fog,” as well as a laser illuminator/laser pointer, laser range finder, and moving target indicator to detect concealed threats.

The 908th Flying Training Unit at Maxwell AFB, Ala., is to become the formal training unit for the MH-139A, which is to replace the Bell UH-1N Hueys for support of the ICBM missile fields and for contingency transport of government leaders in the Washington, D.C., area.

The Air Force has 38 MH-139As on contract, and, last June, the service said that it finished a more than five-month initial operational test and evaluation of the helicopter in advance of a DoD full-rate production decision that the service had expected by April this year.

In January, two MH-139As escorted their first nuclear convoy for Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), according to AFGSC.

A version of this story originally appeared in sister publication Defense Daily.