Leon Silva is Vice President Global Commercial and Military Systems at Lockheed Martin (LM). He has overall responsibility for the Sikorsky S-92 programme. Leon very kindly agreed to meet during the busy Farnborough International Airshow in 2022 to give us an update on the S-92 program and discuss a number of topical issues.
Leon – thanks for taking the time to speak to us. How are things with you?
Good, thank you – it’s a very busy week and as you can see around you Lockheed Martin has a huge presence here. On the rotary side we have been presenting the Black Hawk to the UK media and have had some great coverage.
Congratulations on the recently-announced promotion - what does your role at LM now encompass?
Recently, I was named vice president of Sikorsky’s Global Commercial market segment. I have responsibility for all our commercial aircraft and a small number of Sikorsky’s international military aircraft. To a large extent, this will provide an opportunity for our team to refocus on the commercial market as we see some signs of market improvements. I am excited to lead the team and grow the business in these markets.
There was a lot of coverage of the announcement of the Coatesville closure last year - what is the current status of S-92 production?
There’s obviously been a lot of chatter in the market about the S-92 but what I will say is that we are ready and able to build aircraft when customers want them. We are currently building five S-92s in West Palm Beach, these are of course VVIP and SAR machines and not the oil and gas ones you are following closely. We build aircraft in many places and have previously built S-92s in two other locations.
Sikorsky is committed to the commercial business and the order book is open. We are watching the market closely, engaging with our customers, attending events and celebrating key milestones - we just hit 2 million hours on the S-92 (and our competitors are in the low six-figures on hours accrued.) We have a good aftermarket business.
Are you getting enquiries yet for new offshore aircraft? What do you think the future demand profile looks like? What’s the lead time for a new offshore S-92 just now?
As you know, the market has been in a downcycle for some time and we haven’t seen interest in new offshore heavy aircraft in that time but this year we are seeing the recovery in the market and we have been actively working enquires for new S-92s. Sikorsky is a data-driven business and we are following the market very closely, our analysis suggests the current supply over-hang will be gone by 2025 and that’s when new aircraft will be required. The lead time for an S-92 right now is between 2 and two and half years… so those orders need to start coming soon! The overall market size might not be too different to how it is today but of course we have aircraft leaving the fleet for secondary markets and some customers may choose to switch out older aircraft for newer ones.
Are there any supply chain bottlenecks for you at the moment? We have heard from some of our clients about delays in getting gearboxes for some aircraft?
Other OEMs are seeing supply chain disruptions and delays and Sikorsky is no different. Operationally, we don’t have any issues with gearboxes. In the manufacture of parts we obviously test and quality check incoming raw materials and components and we had a batch of materials for S-92 gearboxes that we rejected in that process. This has set us back 6-8 months and we are now catching up but of course in general global supply chains are stretched and this is one of the most challenging times to accelerate anything.
We haven’t heard much on the upcoming S-92 A+ kit - can you give us the latest on timing etc?
We continue to invest in new product performance and safety enhancements including the S-92A+. The demand signal hasn’t been strong just yet and currently timing for the first kits is 2025. As I said before, we are ready to respond when the demand is there, LM is a huge business and can switch on investment very quickly when it needs to. The A+ has some additional investment required to complete the certification.
Regarding secondary markets - we’ve seen some interesting ones this year for the S-92 including rocket-catching and fire fighting but have you seen any incremental demand for the S-92 appear as a result of the war in Ukraine and subsequent sanctions imposed?
We support our clients if they want to do something in the secondary market including the examples you mention. Humanitarian work is an area where end-users could step up from something like an Mi8 to an S-92… the big cabin, ramp, range etc all make it attractive. We have customers that are actively bidding the S-92 for those sort of opportunities.
As we sit here in Farnborough it is evident that the military aviation market is booming… does this cause conflict internally with civil programs? (i.e. within LM?)
Within any company there’s always a limited amount of resources and the demands on those resources (or the requests to have access to them) are always orders of magnitude larger… that is just the reality for any business - you need to deploy resources where they achieve the maximum return. I don’t think LM is any different to any other business in that regard. We’re a big organization and we invest accordingly where we need to. There’s not a civil vs military issue.
There’s a huge amount of interest in the NMH (UK Puma replacement) program this week. How is the Black Hawk positioned?
The Black Hawk is a proven machine, we have 14 million hours flown on it, 4 million of those in battle. It is designed to be operated in austere environments. Some 5,000 have been built and delivered to customers all over the world. Hundreds of options have been developed for the hundreds of customers… that means there are a lot of ready-to-go solutions on the shelf for today’s buyer. We are on the third generation now and we have modern avionics and systems – the upgradability of the aircraft is well proven. We are confident the Black Hawk will be the aircraft best qualified to meet the UK’s NMH requirements.
LM is prepared to offer strong content to address UK Prosperity initiative by partnering with UK industry to provide the best solution benefitting UK prosperity including local scope for indigenous sub-systems content, unique mission modifications, sustainment, and training, and long-term UK jobs. We understand that doing work locally is important and can build the aircraft to a certain level and finish here. Of course, a lot of Sikorsky aircraft have been built here in the UK, I haven’t counted exactly but it’s something like 1,200 aircraft - there’s one over there! [points to a S-61 / “Sea King”]
Black Hawk at Farnborough International Air Show 2022
Leon Silva - Vice President Global Commercial and Military Systems at Lockheed Martin
Sincere thanks to Leon for his time and insight.
As a reminder, our latest S-92 fleet census is now available and for the first time includes super-medium offshore rotorcraft also. Providing unit-by-unit detail on current status and location for the offshore crew transfer fleet the report is ideal for stakeholders in the heavy and super-medium business. We use state-of-the-art data analytics techniques combined with good old-fashioned primary research to establish who is operating the aircraft, where, and how that has changed. For more detail see here:
