Why the weaponized Black Hawk helicopter matters for Lockheed Martin
Jul 21, 2016, 7:24am EDT
Last week, Lockheed Martin Corp. unveiled an armed Black Hawk helicopter at the Farnborough International Airshow in the U.K., representing what the company had in mind when it cited "revenue synergies" as one of the factors that drove its $9.1 billion acquisition of helicopter maker Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. in November 2015.
It is "taking a utility helicopter platform and essentially transitioning it into an attack platform," said Bruce Tanner, CFO of the Bethesda-based defense giant, on a second-quarter earnings call with analysts this week.
Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Sikosky-built armed Black Hawk would offer some "flexibility that doesn’t exist right now in the marketplace" with its ability to quickly convert from a utility to attack helicopter and back again, Lockheed CFO Bruce Tanner said.
The weaponized Black Hawk equipped the external wings of the helicopter with four weapons stations: launchers for a mix of air-to-ground missiles, a Hydra-70 rocket pod, and a rocket machine gun pod manufactured by the Belgian FN Herstal.
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2016/07/why-the-weaponized-black-hawk-helicopter-matters.html
