PEO Aviation / By BG Thomas H. Todd III: Aviation Family, I was deeply honored to receive the charter to become the Program Executive Officer for Army Aviation in January. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to return to the tremendous team of more than 3,000 Soldiers, civilians and support contractors who make up this world class organization.
The engineering development model UH-60V Black Hawk hovers above the runway as part of its successful initial test flight Jan. 19 in Meridianville, AL. The UH-60V is being designed to update existing UH-60L analog architecture with a digital infrastructure to address evolving interoperability and survivability requirements. / U.S. ARMY PHOTO BY SHANNON KIRKPATRICK, PEO AVN PUBLIC AFFAIRS
PEO Aviation and the Aviation community owe a heartfelt thank you to BG Bob Marion for the truly outstanding job during his tenure as PEO. His leadership and vision during the past four years will have deep and lasting impacts throughout the Aviation Enterprise well into the future.
Stewardship
It’s no secret that as a force, Army Aviation is stretched and stressed, yet it has been able to sustain an incredibly high operations tempo supporting combatant commanders across the globe. But more than 14 years of continuous deployment and the associated strain have taken a toll on the fleet. Limited resources, unpredictable funding and changing requirements continue to place challenges on our ability to maintain the relevance of the current Army aviation portfolio while laying the foundation for continued modernization.
At PEO Aviation we have been given great responsibility as the stewards of very finite resources to effectively execute the Army’s life cycle management for aviation weapon systems while getting the most out of every dollar spent. For instance, the Apache Program Office is on track to implement a multi-year contract across fiscal years 2017 through 2021 which will save over $425 million that would have been spent using single year contracts to purchase 244 remanufactured AH-64Es.
The Utility Program Office, working with the U.S. Army Prototype Integration Facility, Northrop Grumman, and Redstone Defense Systems successfully completed the initial flight of the UH-60V Black Hawk development model on 19 Jan in Huntsville, AL. This milestone was the culmination of a cockpit design and development effort that was completed on schedule, to the day, within 26 months of the original contract award.
These are just a couple of examples of the work taking place within the various Program Offices in collaboration with organizations across the Aviation Enterprise to meet current and emerging requirements.
In this issue of Army Aviation magazine, the PM updates will give you a sense of the tireless effort the PEO Aviation workforce puts in to deliver capabilities to Soldiers every single day that continue to earn the ground commander’s confidence and respect through hard work, devotion, and intelligent application of strategies.
Looking Forward
PEO Aviation, along with the rest of the Aviation Enterprise continue to execute effective programs that successfully remodify, upgrade, and remanufacture existing platforms to increase the life of our aircraft’s relevance and survivability today, while addressing the requirements to transform and modernize the aviation fleet for tomorrow.
Our top priority in PEO Aviation is the Soldier and ensuring they can execute the challenging missions they perform every day.
Being a returning PEO Aviation alumni, I am very proud to say that my experience has been that when this organization has been challenged to deliver capability, they get it right. Maintaining that high level of success is imperative and I am confident that we will continue to effectively deliver capabilities that support our great Soldiers and that the Army remains the world’s premier combat force.
There is no better team in our Army than the Aviation Team of Soldiers, civilians, support contractors and our industry partners, and I am proud and honored to be a part of it.
BG Thomas H. Todd III is the U.S. Army Program Executive Officer for Aviation located at Redstone Arsenal, AL on January 11, 2017.
