The US military’s budget request for fiscal year 2015 includes cuts to a number of aircraft programmes, but Sikorsky and analysts call one item unique – the proposed cancellation of orders for 29 MH-60R Seahawks under a multi-year contract. If approved by Congress, such a move would raise broad concerns about the surety of other contractors’ multi-year procurement deals, and affect orders for UH-60 Black Hawks from the US Army and some foreign partners under the same contract.

“An actual [multi-year procurement] cancellation would be unprecedented,” says Richard Aboulafia, vice president of Teal Group.  Aboulafia calls USN’s proposal a “game of chicken”, and “a plea to Congress to insert the cash.” But if Congress doesn’t blink, “the navy might well need to either re-instate the contract or pay high cancellation fees,” he says.

Sikorsky is jumping into a lucrative and growing market. Steven Zaloga, a senior analyst at Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax, Virginia, said unmanned aerial vehicles represent “one of the few dynamic markets” in the aerospace industry hit hard in the recession. The Teal Group estimates the global market for unmanned aerial vehicle hardware will rise from $2.9 billion this year to $5.5 billion in 2019, Zaloga said.