Sikorsky looks to hire 100 more Seahawk support staff

The jobs are required for Sikorsky Australia’s through-life support services for the MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and, potentially, common maintenance across the Australian Defence Force’s new Black Hawk helicopter fleet.

The ADF currently operates 23 MH-60R Seahawk helicopters, based out of Nowra. Australia is expected to operate a total number of 76 Seahawks and Black Hawks when deliveries are complete. Another 13 Seahawks are scheduled to be delivered by the end of next year.

“In the technical maintenance field for aviation maintenance, we expect about a hundred positions of growth across the whole business and I expect around 60 of those will be specific to maintenance,” Sikorsky Australia general manager Cliff Kyle said.

“There is a big contingent of support staff that provide to the overall operation (in those growth roles) but there’ll be a big bulk of hands-on maintenance people to be required, which we, in part, will grow ourselves, but are also looking for other pathways that they will come through.

“I would expect by around the end of 2028, we will need to reach a mature state of personnel to meet a mature schedule for depot maintenance and Navy operations.”

Sikorsky has previously confirmed that the Nowra facility has a future as a potential maintenance hub that could be used by the United States Navy for repair, overhaul and upgrade support, enhancing supply chain resilience in the Indo-Pacific region.

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MH-60R Seahawk helicopters perform a range of essential tasks, including anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, vertical replenishment, passenger and cargo transfer, and search and rescue missions.

“We completed the US Navy Planned Maintenance Inspection in 2023. Should we be asked to replicate that activity, we would be able to at very short notice,” Kyle said.

“A lot of the strength in the operation of the Romeo is around its configuration commonality with the US Navy. And that’s a key pillar of us being able to generate capability for ourselves first, but then quickly replicate that to provide support to an identically configured aircraft.

“There are a number of commonalities where it’s either identical or an extremely small increment of capability to achieve the same repair on a Black Hawk (compared to a Seahawk). The only thing that’s stopping a Black Hawk component being repaired right now is the fact that we don’t have any to repair (because they are so new).”

Kyle also confirmed that the Nowra facility is considering moving towards a limited fabrication capability for aviation parts.

“It’s a very new thing that we’re looking to do. Not so much the 3D printing yet, but certainly the cold fabrication as we would call it in the trade,” he said.

“So there are a number of things on the aircraft that are able to be manufactured from a six-axis CNC machine, for example. So I think small hand-sized brackets and things of that nature that are relatively simple in nature that cannot be necessarily procured through the supply chain.

“One of the things we’re looking at right now is enhancing our capability to be able to fabricate those particular components. Not because we think it’s a significant advantage to the business, but we think it’s a significant advantage to the customer. Because our ability to reduce the time between ordering a part and putting to an aircraft means it’s in the Navy’s hands for longer to employ the capabilities.

“We are looking to, at every opportunity, to have our own capabilities, so we have the flexibility to literally walk into a workshop and have a technician look at a drawing, turn out a component that we can then subsequently fit to an aircraft to make a certain decision. It’s a very near-term emerging requirement.”