August, the UH-145 was officially designated UH-72A by the Department of Defense. The award was confirmed in October 2006 following protests from losing bidders. Despite a four-month delay due to the protests, the first UH-72 was delivered on time in December, when the name Lakota was also formally announced for the type, following the service's tradition of giving Native American names to its helicopters. On 23 August 2007, the UH-72A received full-rate production (FRP) approval to produce an initially-planned fleet of 345 aircraft through 2017. The UH-72A is produced at Airbus Helicopters's facility in Columbus, Mississippi. Initial production was assembly of kits received from Eurocopter Deutschland but full local production was reached in 2009. In December 2009, the service ordered 45 more UH-72As. The 100th Lakota was delivered in March 2010, and the 250th was delivered in April 2013. That month, the U.S. Army opted to halt procurement after 2014 due to budget cuts; at that point, a total of 312 Lakotas were on order by the service. In January 2014, Congress gave the Army $171 million to procure 20 additional UH-72As. The 300th UH-72 was delivered to the Army in May 2014. In May 2013, Congress questioned why the UH-72 had not been considered for the armed scout role. The Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno stated that the UH-72A was developed for domestic operations and is not considered to be operationally deployable to combat zones. The UH-72 is employed by the US Army National Guard in a utility role in the US, releasing UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to deploy overseas. On 21 June 2013, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall stated in a letter to Congress that UH-72 combat modifications were "presently unaffordable". Fleet-wide combat modifications would reportedly cost $780 million and add of weight per helicopter; changes would include passive and active survivability systems, hardened engines and drivetrain, external lighting and communications upgrades. Trainer use In December 2013, the US Army was considering retiring its OH-58 Kiowa fleet and transferring all Army National Guard and US Army Reserve AH-64 Apaches to the active Army to serve as scout helicopters. With this plan all 100 active Army UH-72s along with 104 Army National Guard UH-72s would be transferred to use as training helicopters, replacing the Bell TH-67 Creek at the United States Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Some