Congress rescues Chinook Block II from Army, again
By Dan Parsons | December 9, 2020
Estimated reading time 5 minutes, 12 seconds.
Congress has again saved Boeing’s Chinook Block II program from U.S. Army plans to cancel upgrading its CH-47F fleet with the performance-boosting retrofit package.
The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes $296.7 million for CH-47 helicopters, an increase of $136
million from what the Army requested, all of which is for F-model Chinooks upgraded to Block II configuration. The Army requested six CH-47F helicopters, but will get 11, five of which are Block II F models.
Three engineering and manufacturing development CH-47F Block II aircraft have been in flight test at Boeing’s Mesa, Arizona, facility. Boeing Photo
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Editor’s Note: This report is limited to the latest information obtained by SOFREP about the death of MSG Lavigne and Timothy Dumas. Their deaths underscore larger issues such as over-deployment, fatigue and administrative oversight that negatively affect the Special Operations Community. SOFREP will be investigating these aspects further in subsequent reports.
It was the afternoon of December 2. A hunter out for a deer was on federal reservation property adjacent to the sprawling Army base of Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. He had only driven his truck about half a mile up the soft dirt track road in the area between the Holland Drop Zone and Lake MacArthur when he found his path blocked by a gray late-model, crew-cab pickup truck. The vehicle appeared to have been stuck in the soft sand up to its rear axle.