Boeing says it has won a $240 million contract to upgrade five more Chinook helicopters for the U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command, adding work for the company’s sprawling assembly plant and engineering complex in Ridley Park.

The deal brings to 51 the number of Chinooks that Boeing is rebuilding for the Army under the MH-47G Block II program. Boeing says it expects to deliver all those aircraft by 2030. Besides Delaware County, the company also makes helicopters at facilities in Arizona.

Though Chinooks have been in active service since the Vietnam War era, the Army has been rebuilding the heavy-lift helicopters to reinforce airframes, improve fuel tanks, add aviation electronics, and make it easier to maintain the helicopters in the future.

More than a dozen U.S. allies in East Asia and the Middle East also use Chinooks. Boeing last year contracted with a German company to supply up to $8 billion worth of Chinooks to Germany as that nation expands its military to help its European allies brace for potential worsening conflict with Russia. The United Kingdom, South Korea, and Egypt are also buying Chinooks under current contracts.

Tilt-rotor V-22 Ospreys, another military aircraft pioneered at the Ridley Park plant and mostly used by the Marines, have not won similar orders among U.S. allies. But the V-22 assembly line remains active: on March 21, Boeing and its partner, Bell, won a $590 million contract to build five Ospreys under new modifications, model CMV-B22, for use on Navy aircraft carriers, replacing Grumman’s Greyhound planes. The new Ospreys can transport up to three tons of people or cargo more than 1,000 nautical miles. That work will be split mostly between Bell’s Texas factories and Ridley Park.

The plant has not added new aircraft lines in recent decades. The company says it would continue to use Ridley Park as an engineering center even if production of the current aircraft were to cease.

During the first Trump administration, Pentagon planners tried to scale back orders for Chinooks and contemporary tanks and trucks, arguing that the U.S. was less likely to engage in late 1900s-style land wars, and more likely to need long-range artillery, unmanned vehicles, and digital and space warfare systems to counter likely threats from China and other potential enemies. Trump this year called for military budget cuts.

But relentless lobbying from Congress members in the Philadelphia area and their allies in other helicopter centers has helped keep Chinook orders growing.

Special Forces have “unique and complex mission requirements” that require the upgrades, Heather McBryan, who heads Boeing’s Cargo Programs unit, said in a statement. She predicted Chinooks will be in U.S. service for decades to come.

The Boeing plant and the company’s engineering unit in Delaware County employ around 3,500 people, one of the largest industrial employment centers remaining in the Philadelphia area.

Other area helicopter plants include Leonardo’s newly expanded works next to the Northeast Philadelphia airport, which employs nearly 1,000; and the former Lockheed Martin Sikorsky plant near Coatesville, now operated by Piasecky Aircraft Corp., the pioneering helicopter design firm based in Essington, which includes Boeing among its longtime clients.

The region is also home to helicopter and other military suppliers, such as Berwyn-based TE Connectivity, a global maker of sensors and connectors for aircraft, aerospace, and other applications.

All the helicopter makers are also seeking military contracts for unmanned (drone) aircraft, which might in the future be launched from manned helicopters as well as land- and sea-based platforms.

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