ADF Helicopters in crisis

Just what the grounding means for the MRH’s service introduction plans also remains to be seen, but it’s fair to assume weeks or even months will be required on top of the grounding period to get the trainee crews and instructors back up to speed. Certainly, the planned IOC for Navy’s new 808SQN of early 2011 must be in jeopardy.

Ironically, the Sea Kings of 817SQN which are due to be replaced by the MRH 90 are going great guns. The restructure of the aircraft’s maintenance program following the fatal April 2005 crash of a Sea King in Indonesia, combined with enhanced communications equipment and crashworthy cabin seating is inspiring renewed confidence in the five remaining airframes amongst its crews and force element commanders.

But the 16 Seahawks of 816SQN are working harder than ever as they support a continuous deployment in the Persian Gulf region, ongoing maritime border patrols off the north and west coasts, major exercises such as RIMPAC, and crew training back home at Jervis Bay.

Navy’s move to lease three and possibly more A109E Power machines from Raytheon under the Retention and Motivation Initiative (RMI) to fill the large training gap was a smart but temporary fix, with the gap unlikely to be properly filled until the Seahawk fleet is replaced, and a new training helicopter to be acquired under Air 9000 Phase 7 is in place.

Fortunately and despite funding difficulties, the Air 9000 Phase 8 project to replace the Seahawks and cancelled Seasprites has been given “urgent” status by government, and a decision between the ‘Team Romeo’ MH-60R and Eurocopter’s NH 90 NFH is due by the end of 2010 with initial service entry from (a still distant) 2014. Despite a huge marketing effort by Eurocopter subsidiary Australian Aerospace in recent months, Defence insiders have consistently backed the Romeo as the preferred and likely solution due to the perception that its off-the-shelf configuration will mean lower risk and greater interoperability with the US along the lines of the RAAF’s C-17 and F/A-18F acquisition models. A July 9 US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notification to Congress of a “possible sale” of 24 MH-60Rs to Australia combined with the MRH 90’s recent issues have only served to strengthen that perception.

Over at Army, the small six-strong Chinook fleet is providing sterling service to Australian and allied forces in Afghanistan, with two deployed at any one time and rotated back to home base at Townsville every six months or so. But the harsh environment of Afghanistan has been hard on the Chinooks and maintenance costs have been huge, so the seven new CH-47Fs which were ordered earlier this year can’t come soon enough.

The Black Hawk fleet continues to soldier on, although the scaling back of a the Air 5416 electronic warfare self protection upgrade to comprise just a dozen aircraft with a less capable than planned system means these machines are effectively confined to low to medium threat environments and are unlikely to be deployed operationally anytime soon.

With ongoing delays to the planned acquisition of a new common training helicopter for Army and Navy under Air 9000 Phase 7, Army decided last year to perform an avionics upgrade to its fleet of Bell 206B Kiowas. The upgrade will see digital displays and enhanced navigation systems added to the 30 year old aircraft to bridge the gap to the all-digital ARH Tiger and MRH 90 helicopters. But industry rumours suggest all is not well with the Kiowa upgrade, with integration issues believed to be hindering its progress.

Army has also finally declared a limited operational capability of its ARH Tiger at Darwin, although the snail’s pace progress of bringing this exciting capability up to speed has been excruciating. Part of the problem with ARH is that Australia’s program is inherently tied to those of lead customers for the type, France and Germany, both of which have struggled to introduce the aircraft operationally and thus pass on the corporate knowledge necessary to Australia as a customer nation. France has accelerated its program in recent months with a small operational evaluation deployment of Tigers to Afghanistan to support its search and rescue helicopters there, and the Australian Army has been studying the results form this with keen interest.