Helicopters
The good news today is that this blog has moved. It's now at this location.
We're switching to Movable Type as our blogging platform and you'll see that the result is more elegant for you, and with better functionality built in for you and us. Searches, trackbacks, comments, and feeds all work better.
All the archived content has been painstakingly migrated to the new site. We'll keep it here for a while, but this site won't be updated from now on and I urge you to bookmark the new location immediately.
Naturally we'd love to hear what you think of the new format.
The fact that the British armed forces don’t have enough battlefield helicopters to make ends meet has been a known fact for several years now, but it had looked as though troops on the ground in Afghanistan would benefit from prime minister Tony Blair’s late 2006 promise – albeit extracted like a bad tooth – that senior commanders would quickly receive any additional equipment they requested to fight the Taliban.
But it now appears that additional aircraft are not among the items needed to do the job in war-torn Helmand province, as secretary of state for defence Des Browne revealed yesterday that “UK force commanders have not requested additional helicopters for operations in Afghanistan since 1 September 2006.” Responding to a written question in the House of Commons, Browne said: “Helicopter assets in both Afghanistan and Iraq are currently assessed by the military commanders in theatre to be sufficient to support operations successfully.”
How can this be? While a deployed force of eight Army Air Corps Westland/Boeing Apache AH1 attack helicopters, four Westland Lynx AH7 utilities and eight Royal Air Force Boeing CH-47 Chinook HC2 transports seems okay, last month’s highly publicised use of two Apaches to deploy four Royal Marine passengers highlighted that something is wrong with the current force mix. Where were the Lynx that are supposed to be operating in tandem with the Apaches? Struggling with the hot and high environmental conditions – even at night? Lacking the armour required to protect their crews? Or worse, operationally useless in Afghanistan?
Flight International reported this week on a formal Eurocopter proposal to supply the RAF with eight AS330 Pumas made surplus to Portuguese requirements by Lisbon’s acquisition of AgustaWestland EH101s. These may, as the EADS subsidiary claims, be fine aircraft for the Afghan theatre (despite the more than 30 years of operations already beneath their rotors) and good for another decade of use, but the time has come for the UK Ministry of Defence to bite the bullet and spend good money to acquire new helicopters, and plenty of them.
However, the MoD seems to be so awash with proposals that a decision could be hard to make: should it snap up shiny new EH101s from Denmark, field new transports under a proposed lease deal or – believe this when it happens – even provide money to get the RAF’s eight stored Chinook HC3s into a working state by about 2010-11? With mission commanders having missed a trick since late last year by soldiering on with what they have rather than demanding more, perhaps the sense of urgency felt by the frontline troops just isn’t getting through…
They have been on the receiving end of terrible press from the general media for years due to contractual shortcomings which pushed up programme costs and delayed the availability of a suitable training package, but the British Army’s Westland/Boeing Apache AH1 attack helicopters are now receiving rave reviews after nine months of activity in southern Afghanistan.
The Army Air Corps’s (AAC) 9 Regt currently maintains a force of eight Apaches and four Westland Lynx AH7 utility helicopters in the country, and has provided close quarters support to the army’s 3rd Parachute Regiment and now the Royal Marines during operations against Taliban guerrillas. In some cases, its formidable 30mm cannon has been brought to bear on militants just 10m (32ft) in front of British troops, who clearly already have full trust in the abilities of the aircraft and the crews who fly them. You can read more about the Apache’s recent performance in Flight International’s News Focus article this week.
One officer from the 3rd Parachute Regiment who has witnessed the Apache’s lethality from such close proximity says he felt more comfortable having the aircraft overhead during contact with the enemy than a fixed-wing asset such as the Royal Air Force/Royal Navy-operated BAE Systems Harrier GR7A. Despite what other army figures might famously write in their e-mails home, this isn’t because the RAF is “utterly, utterly useless”, but is because the Apache can remain on station looking over the shoulder of ground troops, providing a very evident presence to deter or take the fight to enemy combatants. And judging by some of the combat videos shown by the army during a recent media day at the AAC’s Middle Wallop headquarters in Hampshire, even a 10-round burst from that cannon is more than enough to spoil your day.
I got the impression from 9 Regt pilots that they have been greatly frustrated by the lack of coverage that their exploits in Afghanistan have received from the mainstream press during the first nine months of UK Apache operations in the country. Maybe this is just because Iraq gets all the attention these days, but I suspect that rather like with the RAF’s Eurofighter Typhoon, many journalists aren’t interested in writing good news stories when something goes right after so many years of knocking.
Many people expected the Apache to fail on its debut tour of duty, due to the dusty conditions, ambient temperatures of up to 49°C (120°F) and the combined need to operate at altitudes approaching 10,000ft (3,050m). Many criticised the UK’s decision to buy 67 of the aircraft, equip them all with mast-mounted Longbow fire-control radars and integrate Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 engines.
But despite the failings of the Ministry of Defence’s original contract framework for the Apache, the army’s experience in Afghanistan shows that planners for the large part got its configuration right. There can be little question that Boeing’s AH-64D Apache Longbow is the best attack helicopter out there, and in the AH1 variant the UK has fielded some unique capabilities which make its aircraft even better in the Afghan arena than anything the US Army can bring to the fight.
Fair enough, the MoD’s £3.1 billion ($6 billion) procurement and introduction of the Apache has at times fallen well short of the mark, but in the AH1 it now has a capability that will provide huge support to UK and coalition troops for many years to come. Perhaps it’s time at last for the type – and the AAC – to receive a bit of hard-earned praise?
As the first of the four Nordic nations to receive its new multi-role helicopters, Denmark is justifiably proud of its EH101 fleet. So much so, in fact, that its air force invited a trio of British journalists to ride aboard as its newest example was delivered last month. Too good an offer to refuse at the best of times, but with Flight International about to publish a package of Nordic special features, I jumped at the chance to travel with M-512.
There would, however, be a couple of unusual conditions for the guests to come to terms with: we would have to wear rubber, and might well have to cross our legs for a bit…
The EH101 is no ordinary helicopter, and ours was to be a long journey, taking us from AgustaWestland’s Yeovil manufacturing site in Somerset directly to the home of the Royal Danish Air Force’s (RDAF) 722 Sqn: Karup airbase. In total, the engines would be running for 4h 20min, and the flight would be interrupted only by a brief leg stretch – but no prospect of a comfort break – on the deck of a North Sea oil rig.
I guess it highlights my limited experience in flying helicopters over large expanses of water, but my first time wearing an immersion suit was to be an entertaining one. We climbed into our strange attire to strangled cries of “Bring out the Gimp” (a reference to an undesirable character in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’), while deep down we were all wondering the same thing: where’s the toilet on an EH101? You guessed it; there isn’t one.
The immersion suit certainly isn’t one of the most attractive items a person could choose to wear, but it’s probably a lot better than chinos and a smart shirt if you have to ditch in the North Sea. And trust me, the cable you can see in the photo isn’t heading anywhere suspicious…
The RDAF is within three months of flying its first search and rescue (SAR) missions with the EH101 Joint Supporter from Karup, with eight of the type to progressively replace the service’s 40-year-old Sikorsky S-61s. But we were bringing home Denmark’s fourth of six tactical troop transport (TTT) examples, which will provide the Danish armed forces with a new battlefield capability from early next decade.
Up front for our flight was an unusual combination. In the left seat was Bak, a former Danish army Hughes 500 pilot and fixed-wing instructor, with SAR instructor Jøl – a former Saab Draken and Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter pilot – alongside him. Also aboard were a further three Danish personnel.
We took off from Yeovil at 09:31 on 17 November, with our route appropriately taking us over the nearby Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton and then past Royal Air Force bases Lyneham, Fairford and Brize Norton. We then passed to the north of London, came close to RAF Lakenheath and then headed out over the coast near Lowestoft at 10:45. While on the way at 5,000ft (1,520m), we also got the chance to try out some of the Joint Supporter’s gleaming mission equipment, and I was able to put a quick call into the office using the aircraft’s Iridium satellite phone; part of a diverse communications suite which will meet the demands of both SAR and battlefield transport duties.
Our speed was initially restricted to 120kt (222kt) due to our heavy take-off weight of 15,200kg (33,500lb); just 400kg short of the type’s maximum, but this later rose to around 150kt after some of our 3,900kg fuel load began to burn off. In fact, with a strong tail wind aiding our progress, over the open water we actually achieved an indicated air speed of 197kt, frustratingly close to equaling the 200kt only achieved once before by the RDAF’s EH101s.
I’ve never experienced this before, but our crew complained during the flight that we weren’t burning enough fuel. Our initial plan – key to being able to make it directly to Karup without refuelling on the way – was to switch off one of our three engines to cut fuel consumption during the cruise. But because of our high speed we were unable to do this until after we made a brief stop on the Halfdan Alpha rig in the Danish sector of the North Sea. This was another first for me, and I was subsequently assured that the “moderate” wind speed of 26mph on the helideck – with gusts attempting to knock you off your feet – was making it quite a pleasant day out there. Not somewhere I’d want to holiday though, thanks all the same!
After a brief period of flight on two engines, we went low level along the stunning west coast of the Jutland peninsula at 200ft, before heading inland to demonstrate the capabilities of the TTT’s laser obstacle warning system. It’s a bad thing to ask a helicopter pilot to show off this sort of system, and we were soon heading straight at a 1,200ft-tall TV mast, with cautions and warnings blaring out as I sank that little bit lower in the cockpit jump seat. At least the kit works though! Finally, we used the aircraft’s autopilot to pick up the ILS signal from Karup and automatically descended down the glide path, settling 70ft above the runway centre line, slightly nose up and at a forward speed of 60kt before Bak took control. That’s a capability I’d already witnessed on a Royal Navy EH101 Merlin HM1 flight into RNAS Culdrose earlier this year, and is a reassuring club to have in the bag.
As with my two previous flights in an EH101, the flight was enjoyable and didn’t feel like a long time to be on a helicopter, which bodes well for crews on future SAR missions. It did take about five hours for the immersion suit pinch marks on my wrists to fade away after we reached Karup, but thankfully as I passed on the offers of coffee until 30min from landing that was the only drama I experienced in wearing it!
In some later e-mail correspondence, one of our RDAF hosts noted: “Thank you for flying Royal Danish Airlines – hope to see you onboard again another time”. I’ll be waiting for my next invitation too; maybe a SAR trip next time wearing a nice orange suit?
I fulfilled a long-held ambition a few weeks ago, when I got the chance to tick another UK military aircraft type – AgustaWestland’s EH101 – off in my flight log. Surprisingly though, it turns out that Merlins (as EH101s are known in the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy rotorhead communities) are a bit like London buses: wait long enough for one and two will turn up at the same time.
I’ve been writing about the Merlin for quite a few years now, and one of my most exotic media trips was linked to the early development of the RN’s HM1 version. This came in March 2000, when I visited the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Centre, or AUTEC, on Andros Island in the Bahamas. But I had never been given the opportunity to fly in the type until I recorded a double milestone during a UK Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO)-run media visit to RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall last month.
The Merlin seems to have been around for a very long time now, but the DLO describes the RAF and RN aircraft as “fleets in growth”, and adds that it will not be until next year that the type will be declared as having reached full operational capability. This will represent the frontline availability at any one time of 15 of the RAF’s 22 Merlin HC3 transports and 30 of the RN’s remaining 42 Merlin HM1 anti-submarine warfare/multi-mission helicopters; another two of which have been destroyed in accidents.
After touring the UK Defence Aviation and Repair Agency’s Fleetlands site – home to “depth” maintenance of the UK’s AgustaWestland Lynx, Westland Sea King and Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters (including a damaged Chinook HC2 freshly returned from Afghanistan) – I hopped aboard a navy Merlin HM1 for the flight to Culdrose. Also travelling with us were a second RN aircraft and a Merlin HC3 from the RAF’s 28 Sqn.
Sitting at one of the rear operator’s consoles in the 824 NAS-operated aircraft, it was hard to believe that the HM1 is on track to receive a major systems upgrade worth £750 million ($1.4 billion), as at first glance its flat screen displays and sophisticated lay-out seem cutting edge. But some of the aircraft’s computer systems were already obsolete before the aircraft entered frontline use, making it difficult and expensive to support, and crew members say the operating system is cumbersome to use, due to its lack of touch-screen controls. With new displays and an open architecture mission system the aircraft will be easier to use and simpler to modernise in the future, they say.
The HM1 offers a really smooth ride – so much so in fact that when I moved to a forward-facing seat at the rear of the aircraft about half an hour into our 90min flight I even managed to go to sleep for about 15min. After descending through the clouds and into a murky Cornwall afternoon our tour resumed with a look at the Merlin depth maintenance facilities at Culdrose, which are used to support aircraft for both services.
My flight back to Fleetlands was in an RAF Merlin, call-signed Vortex. This feels like a different beast to the RN aircraft due to its large and largely empty rear cabin; it’s only once you sit facing sideways inside the EH101 with the HC3’s tail ramp open that you get a real sense of the platform’s size. The ride wasn’t as smooth as in the HM1, as you’d expect in a troop transport, but it was still a very different experience from riding in a Chinook. It’s also an odd experience kneeling up front and chatting to your helicopter pilots for five minutes before realising that neither of them are actually doing anything much, thanks to the Merlin’s autopilot.
Admittedly the UK still has some little way to go to get the best out of its maturing Merlin fleets, but planned upgrades to the HM1 and improved support and maintenance systems for both types are already beginning to make a difference on aircraft availability rates. With the RAF still maintaining a detachment of around five Merlins at Basra in southern Iraq, that can only be a good thing.
If you have an opinion about the Merlin or another nation’s EH101s then I’d welcome your comments below.
It is rare to spot something truly new in one of the hundreds of reports issued each year by US Department of Defense’s legion of internal think-tanks, much less learn of the existence of an undisclosed, revolutionary helicopter development project. But it can happen.
And so it is with the recently published, 175-page report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Mobility . Under the subheading, “Future capabilities” (page 56), it casually unveils a US Marine Corps proposal to build the largest helicopter in history. It lists two candidates to replace the USMC’s venerable CH-53E – the CH-53X and the CH-53X+.
The CH-53X is now called the Heavy Lift Rotorcraft (HLR), and is correctly described by the DSB as a proposal to develop a new variant of the CH-53E that can transport a 27,000lb payload about 110nm.
Then comes the news about the CH-53X+. Here’s what the report says:
“The CH-53X+ is designed to carry a 40,000-pound payload to a range of 250 nautical miles. It would require making major aerodynamic and structural changes to the CH-53E. Maintaining current disc loading would require a 116- to 120-foot-diameter rotor. This modification would in turn require a redesigned fuselage and an extended tail rotor boom.
“Some members of the helicopter design community have observed that the capabilities projected for the CH-53X+ represent a major challenge. The introduction of a new engine, a much larger rotor, higher disc loading, a new tail boom, and (probably) a new transmission amounts to a new aircraft, with many design unknowns.
“Further, a helicopter with a rotor diameter of 120 feet and takeoff weight of approximately 160,000 pounds may not be compatible with existing ships. The anticipated requirement to carry more than 40,000 pounds to ranges of 250 to 300 miles is similar to the capabilities of the Russian Mi-26 HALO helicopter. The existence of the Mi-26 suggests that the technology for such an aircraft already lies beyond technology readiness level 6. However, it is not clear that the airframe of this aircraft has the dimensions to allow internal carriage of ISO containers or Stryker vehicles.”
Ordinarily, this little blurb would make quite the news story. But there’s a problem – neither Sikorsky nor the Naval Air Systems Command nor the US Marine Corps’ requirements branch apparently has knowledge of nor interest in such a massive new helicopter. Representatives of each organisation have theorised that the DSB may have confused the CH-53X+ proposal with a possibly aged – and long-forgotten, if it ever existed – concept for a CH-53 variant for the separate Joint Heavy Lift proposal, which is a US Army-led programme.
So perhaps for now we’ll call the CH-53X+ a mystery. But if anyone spots a new variant of a CH-53E that has a fuselage the size of a Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules, give us a ring.
The UK’s patchwork quilt of police helicopter operations continues to provide great value for the helicopter industry – less so for the local taxpayer and the UK government which must despair at not having a uniform airborne surveillance capability throughout the country at a time when the terrorist threat is so high. However, as yet, there has been little extra funding for police helicopter capability.
Britain’s police forces currently fund their own helicopter operations and can – more or less – buy, lease or pay a third party to operate any helicopter, kitted out in whatever way they want. Now that makes sense: London’s Metropolitan Police and some of the bigger urban forces clearly have a need for a more sophisticated airborne infrastructure than rural Devon and Cornwall or Cumbria. But there is no consistency between neighbouring forces with similar populations and profiles. A dangerous joy-rider who crosses a country boundary into an area where the local police do not have a helicopter will only continue to be tracked if that force requests its neighbour to continue its mission.
The helicopter supplier community – gathered at Helitech in Duxford today – are probably fairly happy with the situation, and, in a way, the high level of competition and range of services available on the market probably does lead to some sort of taxpayer value. I’m not sure it should make citizens sleep more soundly in our beds though. While nobody wants police helicopters constantly buzzing over their houses and workplaces, they are unmatched as a resource for monitoring crime and tracking criminals. A central resource, perhaps managed and partly funded locally, would surely make sense.
Technorati tag:
police helicopters
From Ferrari to Armani, Vespa to Versace, the Italians take their brand names seriously, so it is interesting to see where Finmeccanica bosses have taken that brand since the company began to morph from anonymous Italian industrial holding company a few years ago to one of the world's biggest aerospace and defence giants.
Rumour has it that Finmeccanica bosses came within a whisker of ditching the brand entirely before the Paris air show - it came with a lot of baggage in Italy as a cumbersome, state-owned conglomerate with an equally cumbersome name: Società Finanziaria Meccanica or Finmeccanica for short.
Roughly translated that means Finance and Engineering Group. Word was they were going to "do a Thales" - in other words, come up with a whole new brand name for the company that shed any reference to its heritage businesses. However, instead they kept the name and brought in some Italian brand designers and came up with a vibrant bright-red corporate identity that makes Ferrari look like some sleepy, provincial engineering concern.
The new look debuted at Farnborough last year in the chrome and red, sleekly curved shape of a chalet. But this year at Paris, the company went one further and the Finmeccanica stand, a vast red and chrome arena which dominated an entire side of one of the main halls, looked like the sort of thing a Formula 1 team would erect at a motor show.
At the DSEI event in London last week, they went further again, with the Finmeccanica corporate identity on the stand of the now 100%-owned AgustaWestland (Finmeccanica previously shared ownership with the UK's GKN).
The significance of this move should not be lost. In the 1980s the row over who should invest in the then-Westland Helicopters, to keep the UK's defence helicopter champion afloat, led to the resignation of a Cabinet minister, Michael Heseltine. When Finmeccanica completed its 100% purchase of the Yeovil business last year, making the Italian company one of the UK's biggest defence contractors at a stroke, it barely raised a murmur.
Now - if the DSEI stand is anything to go by - the Westland identity appears to have been completely subsumed into that of the Italian giant. Although the Westland web site www.whl.co.uk still has the old logo, it cannot be long before it too catches up. And nobody in the UK is seeing red.
Technorati tag:
Finmeccanica
US East Coast editor Stephen Trimble reports from the field:
"Media day" usually means one thing to serious aviation journalists: FREEBIES! And the best freebie is a ride on a new kind of aircraft. So you can imagine the appeal of the V-22 Media Day on 13 July.
I and about 50 other journalists showed up to get our first ride on this split-personality phenomenon of flight known as the tiltrotor. For this, we had trekked to the US Marine Corps’ remote V-22 Osprey training base in North Carolina’s coastal marshes, a journey which involved a brave test of US Airways’ ability to cope with the remnants of Hurricane Dennis. (Dennis won, by the way.)
The USMC set the long day’s itinerary. It consisted of a brief aerial demonstration, multiple briefings, then about four hours of … really nothing at all. Just waiting. Finally came the 30-minute flight and, curiously, a short awards ceremony. Alas, the awards were for the V-22 squadron, not the journalists.
I can highly recommend the USMC’s tiltrotor thrill-ride. The highlight was a fast, 180-degree turn inducing 2g loads. Depending on your tolerances, you’d either appreciate or be horrified by the USMC’s informal approach to cabin safety. Imagine being encouraged to roam the cabin freely, untethered, with the rear cargo ramp wide open and the pilot manoeuvring aggressively. The few, the proud … the reckless?
I can’t decide if the transition from vertical to horizontal mode was impressive or a disappointment. I guess I had hoped to feel some obvious force signaling that my helicopter was turning itself into a turboprop, but the transitions were almost imperceptible. Not long after our short take-off roll, a fellow passenger turned to me and asked: "Did the nacelles go down?" Indeed they had, but the only tip-off was our turboprop-like speed.
The V-22 naysayers may note the aircraft remains nearly two years away from its operational debut, but the USMC media day flight made a plausible case that the Osprey's many programmatic sins of the past have been atoned for and overcome. And it was one heck of a freebie.
Technorati tag:
Tiltrotor
Lockheed Martin’s US101, better known in Europe as the AgustaWestland EH101 and winner of the prestigious US Navy VXX presidential helicopter competition, has been officially designated the VH-71A. As the last helicopter to receive an official US military designation was AgustaWestland’s A109, operated by the US Coast Guard as the MH-68A Enforcer, that begs the question “what happened to the H-69 and H-70?”. An informative website, www.designation-systems.net, may have the answer. In its section on missing US Department of Defense designations, the website speculates that H-69 has not been assigned because of its sexual overtones, while H-70 may have been skipped to avoid confusion with Sikorsky’s S-70 – the export version of the H-60 family. The US101, meanwhile, is competing for the US Air Force’s CSAR-X combat search-and-rescue requirement. If it wins, it will presumably become the MH-71B.
http://www.designation-systems.net
Technorati tag:
helicopter
