Bell Helicopter to replace Kiowa Warrior helicopter cabins

FORT WORTH, Texas, 5 April 2012. Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company, announced that as part of the OH-58D Wartime Replacement Cabin program it has received a contract for the non-recurring engineering and a "new metal" OH-58D cabin. This contract is the latest in a series that have continually added additional Kiowa Warrior helicopters to address attrition rates with the United States Army Kiowa Warrior fleet. This contract addresses airframe attrition, age, and refreshes the engineering and manufacturing planning for the OH-58D air vehicle. Bell Helicopter was previously taking older A-model cabins and remanufacturing them into D-model cabins; this contract addresses airframe age by providing a completely new metal cabin. The Wartime Replacement Aircraft Cabin program was started by the Army to replace wartime losses suffered by the OH-58D as it obtained over 2 million fleet hours, including 800,000 combat hours.