The U.S. Army has awarded Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, a contract worth up to $472 million to provide engineering services for the modernization and sustainment of the CH-47 Chinook fleet. The work covers avionics upgrades aimed at easing the integration of new capabilities, reducing obsolescence and strengthening the helicopter’s avionics architecture to support mission readiness.
Work will be carried out in Huntsville, Alabama, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. RTX said the effort is designed to increase platform commonality across the Army’s aviation enterprise by advancing open, reusable avionics architectures that can be applied across multiple aircraft types.
Collins Aerospace’s Chinook avionics integrate communications, navigation and mission subsystems into an interoperable cockpit, supporting the Army’s long-running partnership with the company on the heavy-lift helicopter. The contract is for modernization and sustainment rather than new aircraft procurement, pointing to a focus on extending fleet capability and limiting integration complexity across the service’s aviation portfolio.