 in there for the for Arizona operations and then those feeds are actually used for them to direct other aircraft or Border Patrol agents to interdict the people that are crossing the border whether they're drug smugglers or people that are crossing the United States illegally to actually put them on those particular targets So what are some of the holes that we have here? Well, one of it is you see a lot of arrows there most of those arrows are radio communications Now the first arrow from the UAS down to the ops center is actually a data link and that's good So they can actually see the UAS displays in the ops center and they can direct people You know based on what they see towards where the actual detection is But beyond that it's not really networked. So if I'm talking to an aircraft or I'm talking to a Border Patrol agent It's just that it's a radio. I've got a past coordinates. They've got to plot it They got to figure out what apply the airplane none of that part of it is automated and that's part of what we're trying to do Both in the land in the maritime is good to get better automation out of that So I would just say that's one of our missing links on the land side. The other side. I think that is a Emitter for us is in terms of investigations. So That means that I don't have necessarily great linkages With investigative priorities on the borders to the actual operations. I'm conducting That's actually a CVP problem overall for the agency and that's something that we're working through now, which I think the the Creation of the joint task forces West East and investigations will help us integrate that better But that's been a struggle for us here And I would just offer that you have a very wide open border Very large thousands of miles of border having information about where to employ your assets on that border is critical We're obviously not going to join hands and you know block the border off. That's not going to occur And I would also mention an area that's also mature, which isn't that so much in your realm is is how I get source information So we actually are starting a program to buy source information from criminals So that's an area that has some by nest require with it and some controls require But that's another way that you get your information more targeted than you than you have now Where you know you have more of a wide open border from that standpoint next slide So that was them that was the land side this would be the maritime side So on the maritime side, I have another number of platforms I do and also the Coast Guard does I might mention that can detect assets on the water We have the predator UAS we have the P3 the Orion aircraft, which we've just finished We were just about to finish re-winging the aircraft We're bringing on the multi-rule enforcement aircraft the maritime configured version of that has a radar on it So it can detect actually assets moving across the water that information Can be linked I should say I take that back So again the predator can link into the opposite or the air marine opposite or in this case the P3 and the AMEA That's a capability. I want to get on the platforms can't do it right now And then when I actually moving a interceptor either a helicopter or a coastal interceptor or Is indicated there are Coast Guard cutter that's farther out. That's again going to be done via radio communications They be passed to you know to the particular director that Excuse me a local office for us or for the Coast Guard district. We pass the information up to the district headquarters Excuse me, and they can look at what they want to actually vector out there Excuse me. So I so again the the difficulty here for me is networks. I Don't have a lot of networks. This is one of the missing pieces for us here Between my ops centers and my platforms. We need to work on that. I need better connectivity as I've already discussed Investigations and source information is a problem one of the big challenges here in the maritime is you have a lot of boats moving back and forth Okay, you have overt activity you have covert activity. You have illegitimate. You have illegitimate illegitimate activity And part of that is figuring out what is legitimate? What is illegitimate and that gets back to the issue of investigations because you know a legitimately registered vessel may be carrying You know contraband on a drugs Arms money something like that and to target yourself and you need better coordination on the investigation side Yes, that's one of our challenges and I would also mention that That maritime domain awareness is a challenge. I think for everybody As mentioned one of my former jobs or the US Pacific command and the planning and policy director and Just working with the Navy there and even with the Coast Guard now having a good MDA picture of your smaller vessels Is a major challenge for us and particularly as you get farther offshore even your larger vessels that are not AIS equipped You know having a picture of what they're doing is a big challenge for us overall So let me stop there and let us take it. Thank you, sir Good morning everyone. It's my pleasure to be here today give you a little glance behind the curtain our staffs had the opportunity to work together so we I think if My folks put together a brief and Mr. Ali's folks put together a brief you would find that they would be very similar And it shouldn't be surprising due to the fact that we come from the same organization With the same overarching goal. So mine takes just a little bit. I'm going to talk a little bit more more about requirements and such But again, thank you for being here. I'm honored and honored to be provided and be sitting next to my esteemed colleague up there as well For this so first slide if you would please Okay, what I would like to do today is just talk a little bit about Coast Guard aviation on the road ruling side who we are where we are spend just a little bit of time and talk about our Two assets that we operate Specifics of those talk a little bit of about our unique aspects of how we do our business With regards to missions and requirements within Coast Guard road ruling aviation Talk a little bit about our air surface interactions and then finish up with a little bit of a way forward about our future vertical lift Acquisitions and requirements and so Next right on it Next slide, please. No So here's how we are laid out basically what you're looking at this is this is only our rotary wing aviation fleet that you see right here and Again, we've got 25 rotary wing units that we operate across the US including which I'll get to in subsequent slides here We monitor all coastal waters We want to monitor all navigable waters of the US any of those locations. It's it's possible to find Coast Guard helicopters the most recent in upcoming location that we're there owner on a Not a consistent basis, but when needed is the is the Arctic as the Arctic starts opening up to to more and more commerce and more and more US business you'll find that the Coast Guard will be will be up there as well 825 officers or what I have right now running the the rotary wing side of the fleet of total of about 2,000 enlisted crew and If you know the Coast Guard we have about 4100 folks total in Coast Guard aviation So rotary wing aviation is roughly half of what we do But what everybody should get from this is that we are From the location we are a maritime organization our spots are all located next to the water And it makes sense considering the mission sets that we have The Coast Guard by law has 11 statutory missions Yeah, just wanted to let you know that all our rotary aircraft are multi-mission They are involved in every single one of those 11 missions. So next slide, please All right, this is our H 60 one of our two aircraft the the H 60 has been with us since the late 80s Is when we started the acquisition we have 35 operational right now I have a total of 43 aircraft And I say operational because I think it's important to understand the way that we operate You know again, I kind of joke about it and it's not accurate But I want to say it anyways, but you know in DoD if they need 50 planes They buy a hundred because they plan for attrition they plan for it. I mean they they're to me They're doing it correctly Little bit different way that we do it in the Coast Guard is just based on the way we grew up. I have 43 H 60s I need 43 H 60s. I don't have any attrition spares I have them at operational units and the rest of them that aren't in operational units are actually engaged in the The depot level maintenance program So if they're not going through depot level maintenance, they're operational and they just their nose to tail and they just keep going through that cycle They're used for four years. They're put through the cycle So the bottom line there is we have just enough the the operational aircraft that we have in H 60 is very similar to the DoD and other maritime versions of the H 60. It's got a tight wheelbase so that we can land it on ships And it's great. It's a great aircraft for us For the Coast Guard that represents our heavy-lift aircraft The pieces up there with regard to a capabilities are listed the crews. I won't read those for you But this is basically how we how we run that next slide Little history of the H 60s again We started it and roughly the late 80s 1989. I think was our first acquisition In the post 9-11 world of work We found that we had some not necessarily new missions, but we had some new emphasis on missions that we had already Had always had so we found out that we needed to start working on our rotary wing fleet and building the next generation of them For for those of you can remember back that far. We had we had a little integrated deep water system piece that we worked with One of the coas that they had was to replace the H 60s with the AB 139 It was just a coa our course of action, but What we found out is that the the future Demand set that we saw on our medium or larger aircraft that we operated probably all those requirements would not have been handled by the By the AB 139 again a fine aircraft, but just with the requirements that we had it didn't it didn't meet it So one of the pieces that we came up with this was an upgraded version of the H 60 Which has been our acquisition program for both our ruling aircraft is to keep them going Plus the fact that it was relatively new aircraft. It made sense to try to keep those it was it was good business sense for the American taxpayer So what we've done in the recent past is we've done what we call discrete segments within our acquisitions and What we mean by that is it's more or less just fancy words where it's a phased approach to getting the aircraft to where they Need to be for the final for the final type Within the H 60 we've upgraded the avionics. We now have the common avionics System very similar to what the army has the Kaz We've also provided to enhance the electro optical and EO. We have a brand-new suite on there as well that new With all these pieces on board. It's now called the H 60 tango We've gone from the Juliet to the tango and that was completed in 2014 and a service life expected for 2027 or so just get kind of give you an idea of how long these things will be around We were originally working with a with a mindset that they would be available for 20,000 flight hours Working with Sikorsky Sikorsky is very happy with the deep depot level maintenance that we do and the unit level maintenance And if we continue to do that, we're looking at taking those things beyond 20,000 flight hours Next slide, please All right, the second of our two aircraft, which is probably my favorite. I shouldn't say that because my H60 instructor here is the H 65 dolphin now again this this aircraft has been with us since the late 80s We have a total of 90 operational 102 of them total per our program of record although the fleet is down a little bit right now due to some due to some mishaps It is without question the most prolific aircraft we have just and that's basically due to the numbers of aircraft that we have We have more than twice as many of those as we do the H 60s It's all weather day night just like the H 60 the only difference being is we do not allow this aircraft to fly in any Icing at all it just doesn't have the systems on board to deal with that It is the aircraft that we're using for our airborne use of force mission, which we'll talk about in a second here And it's also our row-drowing air intercept Aircraft that we use right here in the cat national capital region. It is also the aircraft that we use for Our shipboard deployments. It's just because we have so many of them and It fits so next slide, please Just real quick a little bit of history Again acquired the first one in 1984 The advancements to the from the original alpha version were again done through our acquisition system In terms of a and sort of a phased approach with discrete segments The plane has gone through seven distinct Discrete segments to get to where it's at right now and actually six I take that back. It's six There's some issues with one of them, but anyway, so we've upgraded the engines We went from the original like homings to the turbo mechas. That was a major change for us gave us about 40 percent more power And it gave us a ton more reliability. It was the it was the right move to make at the time We've enhanced the fleet a little bit for the airborne use of force mission for the national capital region That seemed to work out very well when we armed them it became the charlie version We're just getting to the end of the delta conversions right now Which is brand new digital gps and an international lab system We are just getting ready to start the echo transition Which will be the final transition for this aircraft and that's going to include the cast system the common avionics System on board and also an upgraded afcs system Our transition to the delta again is almost complete the echo starting and we expect this plane to give us Well in excess of the 20,000 hours that we were planning per airframe Working with the airbus helicopter. We've done some analysis And it looks like we're going to be able to if we continue to do what we're doing And keep an eye on specific components. We'll be able to take this plane to 30,000 hours Again, that's nice for us because it allows us to not have to start recapitalizing these fleets until the mid 2020 27 time frame depending on utilization Next slide please Okay, as I said, I want to real quickly talk about just a couple of missions. We have 11 statutory missions I just want to hit on a couple of them The first of which is search and rescue It should be no mystery to anybody, but our search and rescue Mission is probably one of our it's considered our bread and butter In 2016 we're coming up on our 100th year of coast guard aviation, which is a big deal to us But the point I want to make for that is one of the original reasons that coast guard aviation was created was to serve in the search and rescue Round so the point is In the future where our road viewing aviation is is also going to have to take into account the The search and rescue mission So for major mission sets, this is one of our major end game pieces the helicopters And the small boats are probably the lion's share of the search and rescue that occur in the coast guard So we'll need to continue to be able to operate in the maritime environment from ships We're going to have to continue to lift people from the water short of a star trek Transporter that means we're probably going to be dealing with hoists for the next foreseeable future We we're just we're going to be in the hoist business We're going to have a rescue swimmer rescue swimmers have been a Fantastic addition to our our crews So future versions of our rowing aircraft will also have to take care of the rescue swimmers And again, as always interoperable with our surface fleets, both the large both the large ones and the small ones Next slide, please Okay, one of two special missions. I want to talk about these are not Legislated missions. These are the sub missions under the larger Categories, if you will and the first one is is the rotary wing air intercept mission Now the coast guard is an interesting entity. We We wear two hats. We were a title 10 military hat and we were a title 10. I'm sorry title 14 federal law enforcement hat This is one of these missions that allows us to wear both hats when needed The basic mission set falls under for those that are aware of the national capital region A mission that we do it falls under dod. It is a north com mission We work for the dod while we're doing it The coast guard's piece in this is actually an important piece. It's a small piece, but it's an important piece We identify the low slow flyers that may be Trying to bump into the national capital region airspace We identify them and then we pass that information on to the the decision makers that make the bigger decisions If you catch what i'm saying So but the other thing is we can when necessary we can switch hats in flight and actually Become a law enforcement entity We can follow those aircraft and once we have shuffled them off to perhaps an airport outside the area We can actually land and conduct federal law enforcement We don't always do it, but the possibility is there and the dod knows that we can do that so The important mission set force push through here the second one. I just wanted to talk about real quick is our The other aviation special mission we're proud of is our airborne use of force counter drug This is a great mission. This is a mission we share with our cbp brothers and sisters Because it's highly effective For those of you who don't Know the full history many many years ago Again when when you're dealing with The the criminal organizations it's it's a cat and mouse game It's they try to figure out how to get it and we try to counter it They try to counter our counter there was a period of time when the go fast boats when they when they transition from the low or low, you know the low speed Trollers to get large shipments and they transition to the go fast threat And it it ate our lunch for some time. We had a very difficult time stopping us our vessels couldn't do it our Aircraft weren't armed. It was it was nearly impossible to stop them So what we did is we stood up a approval concept back in 1999 It was originally called the hitron 10 because we had 10 folks involved in the the program We leased some aircraft. It was highly successful In fact, it was near 100 i think if i'm not mistaken the intercepts versus You know the interdictions So with that and with the support of our senior leadership and our elected leadership We were allowed to stand up our our unit in 2003 that hitron the helicopter interdiction tactical squad And they are there right now. We are down in Jacksonville, Florida There's 10 aircraft age 65 is assigned to it It's since 2003 since the stand-up of the unit. I think we've accounted for nearly 12 billion dollars worth of contraband As part of that program and again, this is not just the coast guard CBP air and marine has this capability as well And I know this is interest of of our senior leadership within the department to try to Leverage the fact that we we both can do this So next slide, please and this is my second the last slide. This is a very similar slide to The one that general presented but again, it's a maritime conna and Again, it's if you take nothing else from the slide. It's the fact that we are operating within the department With a phased or a layered defense approach if you will It's it's very again. It's almost other than the pictures being different. It's very similar Not identical to the one that mr. Halley's Provided but the bottom line is just go through three pieces. The first layer is the persistent surveillance And that's the top level persistence Surveillance provides you a common operating picture for the units that you have down on the ground or on the water Right now we're using p3 c 130's dash 8's c 27's pretty soon 144's And they actually the the joint program run by CBP with the with the predators is is highly effective as well. So that's the big piece. It provides you the large scale Strategic piece if you will then our smaller units the subunits can operate within The second layer of that is the is what we'd like to think of as tactical surveillance or tactical persistent surveillance That's important because you can't have the big asset the p3 The c 130 You know the medium altitude long endurance UAS Basically hanging around the cutter or the boat. It's it's a waste of it's a waste of an asset You want them looking at the big picture But once they've captured that big picture you want to be able to hand that off to a smaller tactical picture Historically, we've done that with our cutter helicopters But as you can imagine doing it with the helicopters probably the most not Most not the at most not the economical way to do it. There's better ways to do it Um The depiction we have right here demonstrates a small uas launched from the cutter, which is our vision It's what we're working on right now And what that will do is will provide the the ability for the larger strategic piece to continue to move on While the smaller tactical piece is able to pick up the target and track it The third and final piece is the is the bottom section there. That's the end game And for our piece the end game could be an h 65 a hitron capable 65 It puts a couple of 50 caliber rounds in the in the output motor Or it can be a small boat which is launched from the cutter and has the same capability to to stop Regardless of who's doing the end game Coast Guard cbp local law enforcement at the very end you have to have the The investigative side of the house start and that starts with the apprehension. So again, it's a it's a layered concept It's similar regardless of what the mission is. This is a drug mission if you want to think of it that way If you're looking for a lost buoy, we could be doing the same thing Find it with a big thing you track it with a little thing and you and you go get it But you got to have that end game and that's the important part is you have to be able to track everything Next slide, please Okay, so this is my last slide and I said I was going to go in a little different direction So I want to talk a little bit about our future vertical lift piece Eventually within the Coast Guard in with air marine. We're going to have to start replacing our our assets We only have so many hours on our airframes And the manner in which we use them on an annual basis will dictate to us when they need to start going For our age 65 for example, we fly 645 hours a year for us Our 700 for our age 60s. So again, we can track that out. Our engineers are are pretty good with that When the time does come Obviously the replacement is going to be a requirements driven solution And this time a little bit differently in the past most likely it's going to be a multi agency requirements driven solution And the and the department is working on that. We have a joint requirements council working joint requirements for entities and components within the the department We would be Not doing a good thing for the for the american taxpayer if we didn't take all those into account Again title 10 and title 14 authorities for the coast guard. We need to keep that in mind. That'll drive some of our requirements So in accordance with our acquisition program, we'll be using mission needs and analyses like we have in the past. We did one in 19 We did 94 and before that it was like 88 or 89 But we're working on another mission needs statement right now to capture the current aspects of what we have for missions in the coast guard And some of those pieces will include departmental Requirements So we'll have the ability to hopefully Work with them We also have some organizational requirements. The coast guard is within the future vertical lift partnership being run right now by DoD. I sit on the the council of kernels on that We're just a little little brother involved in that but by doing so we're able to perhaps Shape a little bit of the future for the future vertical lift for for the DoD And be able to leverage that because that's what it's all about. It's about leveraging the commonalities And hopefully if you're doing that correctly, you'll end up being able to gain some economies across the across the acquisition And that's not only a benefit for us. It's a benefit for Customs and ice and and everybody else that that it needs airplanes in the future So again, then my final piece here is is the uncertainties of what the future missions will be It's nice to be able to build out an acquisition and build out a replacement to a fleet knowing exactly what it needs to do But historically we find that we change our priorities. We change because the demands change Um, so I think one of the key pieces that I'll just lay out there is our last pieces When we replace these fleets and not just the coast guard, but when when the air marine starts replacing their fleets We're going to be looking for replacements That are highly flexible. I mean they have to be we don't know what the threat vectors are going to be for us Uh, right now with the aircrafts that we have We're able to do that the h 60 and the h 65 had shown to be Uh, you know highly flexible with regards to the missions that we put them in Um, I suspect when we start buying aircraft in the 2020s 2030s I would be surprised at the helicopters that we bought look anything like helicopters from the past Um, the technology is coming. It's uh, you know, we're looking at 300 knot aircraft We're looking at heavy lift. I mean there's there's really neat things coming down the line And i'm very excited about it, but again if we can get a future Uh asset line that is is flexible. I think we'll be doing the work that we're supposed to be doing And that was my last slot. I tried to rush through it and I apologize for spending too much time, but There it is. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much for your attention. I appreciate it Well, usually I ask the first couple of questions I have a couple in mind, but I would like to open it up for your questions first If you wouldn't mind just raise your hand or if you have a question Wait for a microphone to come to you state your name and affiliation if you have one And then please um ask your question in the form of a question if you wouldn't mind I'd appreciate it anybody Up here first Hi, uh, joe guld from defense news Um, I wanted to ask about uh, the last couple of years. There's in in 2013. There was an ig's report that talked about h60 Uh procurement and I wanted to ask if you could you know talk about that uh report and what the way ahead has been since then Thank you So from our standpoint, we're looking at uh, you know, the report basically was Asked to do a cost evaluation between the coast guard depot and the army depot With some of the competition. I guess competition-based idea So they did a substantial amount of work on looking at what those cost deltas would be I don't think we found anything terribly significant there We have looked at what the army moving in a different direction The army has some aircraft that are more the more excess aircraft coming out of iraq and afghanistan We're looking the the aircraft. We're flying out. We're going to slept with the a models those actual a models We're now looking at retiring and just uh going right to l models. The army is in fact Has a surplus so we haven't really closed the deal on that. Yeah, but that's kind of the direction. We're looking at now I'll just add to that that the You know the age 60s that we operate are a little bit different than the age 60s that Aaron marina is operating they come from different lineages So they are they're different However, I think what it does is that the key piece of it is that has the attention of Of our senior leadership that there are similarities and those are the things that we should be looking at Within the acquisition processes Again an alpha is not, you know, it's not going to stand up In many respects to the requirements necessary for for an age 60 Tangled one of our tango versions just because it came from a different location was designed for something different But the commonalities across those assets that sort of the key piece there are things that we can leverage And I think that's that's the direction we're heading is where we can make those leveraged Moves we will make those leverage moves and hopefully save money and You know and get the best the best bang for the American taxpayer Well, we're hoping to kind of work this out over the next year Is our is our intent right now? I mean we're still we have to work with the department on that the actual future direction on that That's kind of what we're looking at right now anyone else Good morning. I'm Eileen Paris. I'm with ericsson aviation And thank you so much for the briefing was very very informative And my question is specific to contract logistic support And particularly if there is any interest going forward as the aircraft get older Any interest in wet or dry lease for both of the agencies to support your missions? And also specifically I'm interested in the future of the Arctic And particularly with the Arctic Council now being led by the United States How you see future aircraft needs going forward particularly to the Arctic. Thank you Um With regards to the the cls is can I use the term cls? Is that okay? Um You know, we have we have a historic within the coast guard. We have a Historic utilization Program if you will that's based upon our users of the aircraft also being the maintainers of the aircraft So we're set up just a little bit differently than AMO is however The basic answer that I have is best value best value is what we're looking for Right now I can tell you we have a by-level Maintenance concept where we have everything pretty much laid out Within our ALC the aviation logistics center down in elizabeth city And then they are the the hub if you will for the the rest of the spokes Which are our aviation units and they maintain unit level maintenance requirements and then unit level Maintenance, you know shelves if you will As far as the Arctic goes very excited A lot of people still question why we even care about the bottom line. It's it is the united states Up to this point. There hasn't been a lot of effort and action up there Things are changing and if american citizens are up there And if they have the possibility getting in trouble if there's american business going on up there Then obviously our our job is to is to be up there and Basically carry out the coast guard's business. So I anticipate that we will we will be there to do what we need to do Yeah, on our side on the contract side, we are on a basically an exclusive contract maintained air force So all of our aircraft the p3 the uas and then our other Tactical aircraft are all maintained on different contracts. So we have no one in the organization actually performs maintenance We oversight the maintenance. We also as our model use either commercial or military depots as our source of basically rework So we are not we are not and this gets back to basically best value Numbers of airpoints. We have those kinds of things And what the cost would be to actually try to maintain that kind of infrastructure ourselves It doesn't really make sense. So we're basically exclusively using either, you know, the army Or maybe maybe in the future the coast guard or for our commercial aircraft or aircraft like the a star or the dhc Dash eight those are all done at commercial depots or commercial facilities because that infrastructure all exists out there Any way for commercial utilization and we're anticipating staying on that model unless we see something significantly different That would be a cost benefit for us to move away from it If I could just add here at csis we had a very robust europe program It is now the program on europe eurasia and the arctic We've been undertaking some arctic research ourselves here at csis over the last five years So we're very excited about the u.s. Presidency of the arctic council that said I personally am involved in a project going forward. We're launching it this month Where we are looking at europe and Considering the arctic part of that in in terms of what are nato requirements Not only just aircraft requirements, but everything going forward looking at it a couple of different scenarios So watch this space here at csis because I think uh, well you'll be seeing something come out of it Anyone else There in the back, please Thank you gentlemen both for being here today My name is connor martin. I work for the charles group We're a consulting firm in dc focused on a lot of aviation things and my question is for commissioner alice I know this is about vertical lift But if you could talk a little bit more about the future of the mea fleet Where you see that in total in terms of total asset strength and uh, maybe some projections about you know How far out it will take before that fleet is kind of finalized and operational Yeah, so on that particular fleet we were hoping to buy those at higher rates than we are now Basically the budget is what the budget is. I mean, so we're buying those at just a couple of year We originally set an end an end state goal of around 50 We're looking at that now to see if we can refine that requirement more In that case it probably would drop But that's not determined at this point now We're still looking at what that might look like and then we're also currently in the process of working to what the Different configurations are going to look like so we're going to have a we have a the aircraft we bought so far are maritime focused They have a maritime radar on them. Uh, we will also will look at a uh, you know down the road a land variant Whether we want to take this vader radar system We currently employing the predator and put it on the the the beat 350 which the army is currently doing We're looking at that as a potential land variant And then we're also looking at replacing our what are called let's see airplanes law enforcement technical collection aircraft That we have out of albuquerque with the mea in the long run, which would be in that configuration So kind of three different configuration of the aircraft is what we anticipate in the future We're kind of again working through what the actual end state numbers look like at this time But I would say that's going to stretch out 2025 at the current rates we're on right now Just at the current buy rates we're on Any other questions Sir, I had a question you said a lot of the aircraft that you get out of Or a lot of the aircraft that you operate are excess surplus from from dod And I know that there are programs in place by which they can transfer Assets to law enforcement agencies one yours being one of them Are you satisfied with how that has worked out in terms of what is available the process? How quickly it goes and the reason I ask is that You know these programs have come under fire recently beginning with the Ferguson, Missouri events of last year CBP does benefit from some of the same programs that local law enforcement benefits from in terms of excess Property from dod. Can you are you are you satisfied with the kind of aircraft assets that are available to you through through those programs? So one standpoint you have to look at and I so let me just kind of verge off to the first part the last part of it first Which is you know, what do you equip your law enforcement organizations with and that's a question that you know That we need to answer as you know an American people You know, uh, I don't think so much for the Department of Homeland Security We're not so much taking on those assets But local police forces are and whether they need that equipment or not I mean is a question to be asked So I'm not going to propose to answer that one there But I would say that there's concern about it And what your police forces look like do they get militarized they look like military forces We have to have to just look at that and uh, you know, see what's going to fit that has its own issues I'll just give you an example I caution my guys on body armor if you show up at a airport to check somebody's license and you're in body armor That sends a message to somebody. Okay. Well, that can be worn underneath your gear It doesn't have to be worn as a tactical vest. So kind of how you portray yourselves I think is a major concern to the American population and you can kind of set a certain tone Depending on what you look like and the kind of equipment you equip yourself with so that would be one side of it I think the other part of it is there is I will say now on the actual aircraft side This used to work, uh, actually very well and uh, in recent years as the dod budgets have gone down These guys are title 10. We're not they want to charge us for all the airplanes So that's a substantial problem for us now Because now I'm kind of you know in the used car business here buying used used aircraft from dod And that's been a substantial problem for us here as of late in getting airplanes out of them Because they'll they'll throw them over to the foreign military sales market You know or the services will get first pick At a free value and that used to be how we worked with them. That's no longer the case So that's a substantial problem for us. So it's not so much a transfer anymore. It's it's a gotta buy them basically Interesting. Yeah, so it's now the cost is not what a new airplane costs But for instance, uh, you know, it was asked about the black ox We're gonna have to pay some amount of money for those aircraft Interesting and and to be honest Obviously, since their access to defense department, they were built for defense department requirements Which may not exactly be a complete overlap with what you need them for Yeah, and any airplane I get which gets to the cost has to be mission honest for my configuration Otherwise their radios won't work with law enforcement radios as an example. So you have to missionize the airplane Okay Anything else it and this unfortunately have to be the last question. That's all we have time for I so I just wanted to ask a follow-up to that you said that originally the the plan was to go with Alpha model black ox and now it's lima model black ox. Is there going to be a substantial cost difference? And um, you know, is the is the capability Really what you're after the in the lima model does that does that fit the mission? Yes, it will the aircraft will be missionized the cost is significantly less Because what was happening to the alphas they had they were going through a service life extension Which basically means strip the airplane down to the you know the studs Replace all your dynamic components overhaul everything. That was a fairly substantial cost Because the a models if you keep in mind are the oldest black hawks in the world So they were reaching their limits and as we bottom in for their inspections We're finding more and more cracks that we couldn't repair and they were you know deemed unflyable at that point So the Yale models are much newer aircraft So we're not we would not they would not be slept and that's the part of the cost It's not going to be there. So it'll be substantially less Anything else? Okay Well, thank you gentlemen very much for your presentations as well as your candor and answering questions Please join me in thanking our panelists