Black Hawk / Seahawk helicopters, bought in bulk: ~$10B across Army, Navy, and an ally in one contract (USAspending)

The H-60 family — the Army's UH-60 Black Hawk and the Navy's MH-60S/R Seahawks — has long been the backbone of U.S. rotary-wing aviation. What makes this contract interesting is the bundling: multiple variants for different services, plus an allied (Bahrain) FMS tranche, all through one Army-run vehicle.

Buying aircraft that come off the same production line together stabilizes component purchasing and production planning and lowers per-unit cost — the same logic as the Navy's submarine block buys, expressed here as cross-service, export-inclusive bundling.

Multi-year contracts commit to several years of quantities beyond the single-year budget cycle: the manufacturer gains bulk component buys and stable employment planning, the government gains a discount. The trade-off is binding future budgets, so congressional approval requirements are strict and "did it really save money?" scrutiny never goes away.

This contract\'s 2007–2016 performance and ~$10 billion cumulative value show what H-60 procurement looked like when the approach was at its height.

Sikorsky was acquired by Lockheed Martin in 2015, bringing H-60 production under its umbrella. Lockheed\'s position atop this site\'s contractor rankings rests not only on the F-35 but also on this kind of long-running rotary-wing demand.