News

Boeing still hopeful of new Japanese AH-64D orders

April 29, 2009

Peter La Franchi / Asia Pacific editor

Boeing says it anticipates Japan will order more Fuji Heavy Industry (FHI)  assembled AH-64D Apache helicopters despite zero funding allocations for the programme from Tokyo for the past two financial years.

The current Japanese mid-term forward defence programme, which ends this year, supported orders for just seven aircraft out of a proposed 64 aircraft fleet. The next mid term defence programme is due for release in September alongside a new annual Defence white paper detailing spending plans for 2010.

Boeing says that “feedback from FHI indicates that it is optimistic about future procurement”.

Japan uses a year by year financial approvals system for all military hardware allocations. Its existing AH-64D build programme saw two aircraft ordered in FY2005, one in FY2006 and one in FY2007. That pattern effectively means full fleet development would take more than two decades.

The 2008 Japanese annual defence white paper, released last July, confirmed that only 4 out of the seven proposed aircraft had been delivered with those aircraft relegated for use in special force and counter insurgency operations. FHI handed over the first Japanese AH-64D to the self defence air force in March 2006.

Boeing confirmed at the 2008 Singapore airshow that Japan was concerned that a transition by the US Army from Boeing AH-64D Block II to Block III aircraft was likely to result in its self defence forces fielding a mixed configuration fleet.

Boeing has proposed sustainment of the Block II configuration to enable an expansion of the Japanese fleet but declines to comment on whether that offer has been accepted. in a written statement provided to Rotorhub 29 April the company said it “stands ready to support all of its customers in the production of the Apache helicopter”.