SNA: Lockheed’s K-MAX ambitions

SNA: Lockheed’s K-MAX ambitions

By Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 11:44 am
Posted in Land

Good morning from the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium in Arlington, Va.‘s beautiful district of Crystal City. (It isn’t actually all made from crystal.)

Lockheed Martin got the proceedings started on Tuesday with an ambitious update about its unmanned K-MAX helicopter, two of which are resupplying Marines now in Afghanistan. Company officials are very pleased with the way the helo has been working so far, making about a flight a day in place of manned resupply convoys, and they’ve got big dreams for what could happen going forward.

The Marines are all good and well, Lockheed says, but company officials said Thursday they’ve had a lot of interest from another big potential customer: The Army. Army service officials are interested in fitting a K-MAX with electro-optical sensors and some kind of “self-defense” armament, said Lockheed exec George Barton, and potentially duplicating the Marines’ resupply experiment on an Army scale.


There’s nothing official yet, Barton stressed (“it’s just a discussion”) but Lockheed hopes it can make the same pitch it made to the Marines: Resupplying troops with an unmanned helicopter takes convoys off the road, removing troops from the danger of ambushes and saving the fuel and wear on their vehicles.

“I think if this current military assessment goes as well as it’s going right now, it’ll show the benefit to troops on the ground, and I think there’s going to be tremendous interest from the U.S. Army, and continued interest from the Marine Corps” Barton said.

Company officials didn’t have exact details Tuesday for how K-MAX compares to traditional ground convoys — as in, exactly how many trips does it save, or how many trucks and soldiers does it take out of the fight. But they did say it takes much less maintenance than a manned helicopter and it can sling a lot of cargo: About 6,000 pounds at sea level and more than 4,000 pounds at 15,000-foot density altitude, the company says.

You might be thinking, great, wonderful, they’re obviously eager to do some big sales, but how about a reality check: This is the year of the big crunch, of Austerity America — does anyone expect anything in this environment but cuts, cuts cuts?  Quite right. But you know the old game: If Lockheed and the services can show they end up saving money with unmanned resupply, given that it reduces the requirement for soldiers and vehicles, this thing could well take off after all.

Barton said Lockheed, Marine and Army officials are working out the “business case” now, based on some of the early data from the Afghanistan trial. He was clearly hopeful: “I think, intuitively, it’s there.”

Join the Conversation

Jeff January 10th, 2012 at 12:19 pm

I appreciate the fact that this will alleviate the need for convoys and should also reduce the amount of equipment soldiers need to carry at any given time… but I’m really curious about how economical it will be. Its a great supplemental capability but we’d be buying multi-million dollar helicopters to carry only as much as a humvee, thus becoming an expensive alternative. A lot of positive aspects to this, but utilizing it effectively could quickly become wasteful pretty quickly.

TMB January 10th, 2012 at 12:56 pm

An LMTV can carry 5000 pounds of cargo, though it’s been a while since I’ve seen one maxed out on a regular food, fuel, ammo run. Depending on what’s being hauled, a 4,000 pound load KMAX is probably replacing two LMTVs. Also remember not only is it replacing cargo trucks on rough roads, but also the gun trucks escorting the cargo. I’m sure in a couple months they’ll have miles and maintenance numbers to crunch from the mission in Afghanistan to see if it’s worth it.

itfunk January 10th, 2012 at 1:43 pm

“and saving the fuel and wear on their vehicles”

Yea if you want to save money transport everything by chopper. Lockheed leading the way in wasting money yet again.

DC2 Jennings January 10th, 2012 at 2:50 pm

you save money by not having to meet the requirements of a manned helicopter and you take out 2 officers and 2 enlisted from the flight crew. you replace with a 1 part time computer jock.

... January 10th, 2012 at 3:08 pm

As a previous poster stated this removes the gun trucks doing an escort, the EOD escort, the people that would have to man these guns / drive the vehicles, the longer time it would take on the ground, and less targets (harder to get at too) for the enemy to hit.

The biggest thing it removes is Americans nervously riding in a vehicle wondering when/where the next IED will hit.

Eric January 11th, 2012 at 12:59 am

Not to mention changing from a 35mph, 1 dimensional, single ave of approach to a 100+mph, multi-dimensional delivery system.

The overall speed & efficiency of delivery increases by multiples.

The early numbers show 1 KMAX can decrease man convoys by over 10% over a normal 7mth deployment.

This doesnt even take into consideration the Systems original purpose to support to Distributed Ops Squads & Platoons.

William C. January 11th, 2012 at 1:54 am

Good to see this joint Lockheed-Kaman project is working as planned. IMHO the K-MAX design was definitely the right choice for this role. Extremely reliable and built solely around hauling external cargo.

Bywrong Skinny January 12th, 2012 at 6:42 am

This looks like a good idea, but those $million helos look very easy to shoot down. I am for finding multiple ways to keeps our grunts supplied and having all of those options available.

Guest January 12th, 2012 at 12:53 pm

As a former stovepiper something just doesn’t seem right about flying drones or helios from the comfort os an air condiotned office thosands of miles away from the action. No real pilot would want to do that, kinda like completing flight training at Pcola and not entering the jet pipeline.

1Sealion January 12th, 2012 at 2:06 pm

This should have been done a long time ago. Most of the deaths and injuries our forces have suffered were because of roadside IED’s. Even manned Helo’s would have been safer and more efficient.

If we are only talking resupply capabilities, cheap avionics should keep the costs down. If the Helo’s stay out of RPG range, and maintain covered approach routes they should be fairly safe.

1Sealion

Chaostician January 12th, 2012 at 7:21 pm

to call it the Lockheed Martin K-MAX is a bit misleading. Kaman’s job was to develop an innovative helicopter. LM’s job is to make it as expensive as possible by “adding value”

Mike January 13th, 2012 at 12:49 pm

You can’t sling cargo under a helo at 100+ mph.

FormerDirtDart January 13th, 2012 at 1:03 pm

It depends on the aircraft, the load, and the rigging. I’ve personally rigged, and watched sling-loads that were regularly carried at or above 100 kts. So. I’m pretty baffled by your comment

Thinking_ExUSAF January 13th, 2012 at 1:11 pm

You’ve gotta love it! “Requires less maintenance… ” lets see now, it gets rid of that maintenance pig called the pilots seat, eliminates the hand actuated controls up front, along with those pesky panel lights.

K-Max replaces them with an complete, multi-axis autopilot, all of the remote actuators for the controls, a very sophisticated air data and navigation set, remote control cargo handling gear (hook, winch, etc), the video gear required for teleoperating, the communications systems to allow a ground based controller to “work” the helo, the ground based comm gear and control station, etc.… and all of that requires less maintenance than that old pilot seat!

Yeah, right! Wanna buy some real estate? The ABILITY to do a thing should NEVER be confused with the NEED to do it! :-)

DensityDuck January 13th, 2012 at 1:16 pm

Dummy. The training costs alone are more than the autopilot, and the maintenance of humans is far worse than anything mechanical. This is not 1952 where we have to completely rebuild the jet engine every time the thing files.

Thinking_ExUSAF January 13th, 2012 at 1:34 pm

Thank you, sir! Always appreciate it when my abject ignorance is corrected. Glad to know that the remote operator doesnt require any training or salary, and that all of those extra communications and computer techs are free and already trained. Since the mechanical parts of a helo (engine, rotor head, transmission, etc) are more or less the same for manned vs unmanned, call that a push for O&M.…And Im certain that you would want to keep the operator (at least) out of the AOR, so the indirect costs of using all of that SATCOM bandwidth for the control signals and such is trivial.

Perhaps it would be educational to actually compare the cost per flight hour and manning required for something a bit less experimental, such as an ISR Predator vs a ISR C-12 in the AOR, I believe that the numbers were provided by the USAF and DHS a few months back in Congressional Testimony! :-)

If that doesnt work, just close your eyes, click your heels and chant “UAV, UAS, UAV, UAS,.…” for a while, and I will just pretend that I have a brain! LOL!

William C. January 13th, 2012 at 3:18 pm

The Kaman K-MAX itself requires a lot less maintenance than a Blackhawk or any other designs the Army uses. It’s true you have a lot of electronics added for unmanned operations, but these systems are rather mature now.

The benefits are of course in no pilot exposed to small arms and whatever else may be along the route. I believe this is only a “part-time” job for a UAV operator too. He doesn’t have the control and monitor the whole flight. He could probably control several of the things.

Thinking_ExUSAF January 13th, 2012 at 4:03 pm

You do hit sqarely on the ONE advantage of unmanned vs manned combat or combat support vehicles. There is normally nobody home to be shot at… except for the guys on the ground at the operating base. Keep the pilot safe, even keep him home in Nevada, but expose an additional 15–20 folk (perhaps 50% direct support to the UAV, 50% to work the logistics for the UAV and the direct support crew) to mortar and artillery fire, sniper attack, IEDs, and all of the other hatefullness in theater. Got to look at the WHOLE picture else you run the risk of just advocating for the sake of advocating.… :-) If you are sending in that platform (logistics transport, ISR, strike, or ????) where there is a significant chance of POWs or KIAs, let it be unmanned EVERY SINGLE TIME. If its a cake run to a FOB with a load of beans and bacon…is the expense of going unmanned worth it?

If you really can have one guy, and one ground station operate a whole fleet of those UAV helos. .and its not just a PowerPoint promise . . then you have something. Patent it quick! :-)

Bob January 14th, 2012 at 12:59 pm

With all due respect, it is the savings of the high cost of flying the fleet for training purposes alone, which is the lure of UAS. With UAS, the operators fly the aircraft much less, and train much more with cheaper simulation. The US prides itself on the high amount of flight time that their crews spend while training. The drawback is its very high cost.

Thinking_ExUSAF January 14th, 2012 at 1:52 pm

Lol! And I would still suggest that a closer look at the costs, TOTAL costs, might be revealing. “Unmanned” is a grand idea, particularly when it make sense no matter the cost. It’s just not a panacea. Don’t get tunnel vision.Sent from my iPhone

JRT January 15th, 2012 at 5:48 pm

I’ll be interested to see if L-Mart’s unmanned K-Max gets certified for operation on the flight deck of a T-AKE selective offload cargo ship, for possible use in support of STOM from a sea base, allowing it to be used in providing direct resupply and sustainment to small units involved in marine amphibious strike operations. That would chop a lot of manpower, resources, and delay from the logistics tail.

Lee J. Vance January 19th, 2012 at 5:42 pm

With half of all casualties in Afghanistan caused by IED’s (7,810 killed or wounded in 2010), I ‘m thinking that the cost of unmanned supply delivery might be considered a bargain by the the wounded soldiers and their families, plus the families of those who were killed. There’s probably a figure somewhere that tells the medical and rehabilitation cost for the average IED survivor, but I haven’t seen a value of the life of a dead soldier to his/her family, or the cost to recruit and train a replacement. There’s more involved here than just financial cost, especially now that there is an alternative.

Thinking_ExUSAF January 25th, 2012 at 8:25 am

Saw this one in the paper this morning on the economics of UAVs, and thought I would add it to this old thread.
http://​www​.washingtonpost​.com/​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l-s…

Bottom line: even though the payloads are essentially the same and the missions the same, the dear old U-2, an extremely expensive aircraft to operate by the way, is STILL apparently significantly cheaper than the Global Hawk! In spite of all of the UAS hype andpolitically correct “target fixation” on doing it unmanned, when it came down to the hard bottom line .…the Dragonlady will continue to fly while the AF’s Global Hawks languish!

*required

NOTE: Comments are limited to 2500 characters and spaces.

By commenting on this topic you agree to the terms and conditions of our User Agreement

AdChoices | Become a fan on and follow us on
© 2013 Military Advantage
A Monster Company.