"New" Air Force CSAR Helicopters

[Lawman]

I think Busdriver is refering more to the issue being the Air Force's mentality of how to equip their aircraft. IE bolt lots and lots of shit to it that is arguably unneccesary and then act surprised when you dont have OGE power.

 

[highside7r]

Anyway, the reference to the placard was that on the older army 60s, 60As I believe, had placards that specified how much torque they could pull for a given airspeed. My understanding is that the original H-60 transmissions were not able to take all the power the T-700s could put out...hence the upgraded transmissions that could handle more torque. Other H-60 drivers please chime in.

We have 1983-87 "A" models and no placards on our birds. In general with the T-700 we are limited to the engines and TGT, never getting close to any TQ limits on the "old" tranny, unless it's really cold outside, which never happens on deployment.

Most of the Pavehawk guys on that "USAF" site say they same about the "M", they need a new platform. They also would prefer to be back under AFSOC so, like the 160th, they can get the funding for toys they need to complete the mission.

 

[bobbybrock]

The Army is in the process of upgrading Alpha airframes to the A+ or "Frankenhawk" configuration. Basically an Alpha airframe with 701D engines and a few of the L extras like the extra Nr sensor. No 38000 series transmission though. So on aircraft with unimproved flight controls there are placard limits. We flew some of the active duty POS's in OEF while we waited for our HH's to get mods.
Pretty much the army fix. We'll give you some good equipment ( engines), but you can't use them to their full potential.

 

[Gatordev]

There already are helos bigger than a 60 and smaller than a 47. The S-92 and EH-101 come to mind.

I got to climb around a S-92 the other day and it was impressive. It was a civilian model configured for SAR, and obviously full of glass and useful avionics, unlike certain other glass Navy aircraft. I was also impressed w/ the internal size compared to the external footprint. We had one of our -60s next to it and it wasn't that much bigger on the outside. I could never get a straight answer as to whether it had 701Ds in it though, but it did have T700s.

 

[RobLyman]

We have 1983-87 "A" models and no placards on our birds. In general with the T-700 we are limited to the engines and TGT, never getting close to any TQ limits on the "old" tranny, unless it's really cold outside, which never happens on deployment.

Spot on. We got rid of our last A model a couple of months ago. It was a 1984 with Kapton wiring. Noone wanted it up until the end. No torque placards in it. No placards in the Ls or the Firehawk modded L I flew last week. No placards in the UH or HH-60Ms either. No Q placards in any of the SH-60Bs or Fs I flew either. None in the HH-60H that I flew. I haven't seen it on any of the models I have flown. Maybe some foreign models had a placard?

However, chapter 5 for the L and M -10 have torque limits that are based on airspeeds above & below 80 kts.

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There have been some interesting comments about the S-92 that I would like to investigate. We have two more aircraft pickups from WPB in early April. IF I do either one I'll take a look at some of the fly-by-wire 92s at the factory. No pictures are allowed down there, but if any of you have questions you want me to ask, I'll ask IF I go down there.

 

[Stearmann4]

Unfortunately the original bidding called for a medium lift (blackhawk size) helo for the mission.
When Boeing sent in a H-47, it won the contract due to the high altitude capability. That started the whole protest since a 47 is not medium lift.

I would think they would want to PR helos, a medium lift purchased in larger numbers and a small purchase of heavy lift. Kind of like how the USCG went with two helos (60 & 65) to cover their SAR requirements.
Have two helos mix allows you to have a higher number of helos as compared to all heavy lift but still give you the capability to do larger extracts or high altitude work.

Yep, heaven forbid they buy a off the shelf, already proven since the early 90s, special ops helicopter that's been landing in Hajji's back yard since the first strike in OEF with great success...we don"t use the MH-47 because we can't afford anything else. If there was something else better out there for the mission, we'd own it. I'll never understand aquisition politics. What's even fuunier, is the US-101/S-92 is only a few feet shorter overall fuselage length than a 47, the overall rotor disk is just larger.

MR-

 

[bobbybrock]

Stearmann,
That is one of the nice things about your community. You guys don't deal as much with the acqusition process.
Lakota is a great example of a poor choice. I got a chance to test drive one for the guard about a year ago and just didn't like the way it flew.

 

[1rotorhead]

There already are helos bigger than a 60 and smaller than a 47. The S-92 and EH-101 come to mind. The tandem rotor thing is a big plus for the 46, admitedly, but it wouldn't be worth starting the design and test process required to make a superphrog again, not to mention the cost of establishing a new production line.

The nostalgia thing can take you weird places sometimes. Everyone always thinks, "Aircraft X was great! We should update it and start building those again!" But, by the time you update it with the mechanical and electronic improvements you'd need for an aircraft to be viable today, you've just built a new aircraft.

NOt a phrog guy, so nostalgia has nothing to do with it. Don't read too much into the question. Brought it up since the 46 is tandem but smaller than 47. Thanks for the recce lesson though.

 

[busdriver]

The medium lift wording was only in the analysis of alternatives not the actual RFP (in my understanding). Think about the fact that we turned a Blackhawk into a light lift airframe with all of our modifications and we still don't have all the toys we'd like. You can argue about whether those mods are really necessary all you want but you're not flying a contested CSAR.

The 47 had a huge advantage of providing an 80% solution with an off the shelf design. Any money spent on R&D to improve the aircraft would benefit the 160th as well. Is it a perfect aircraft? Nope, but it's damn good and had very little risk involved and even if the funding for the follow on block mods had evaporated, the "base-line" aircraft (ie exactly what the 160th flies) would have served very well and been a huge improvement.

 

[suasponte]

Don't forget to mention CAAS. In many ways I hear the F model is superior to the G avionics-wise (coming from a couple DES guys who've flown both). Sure, we don't have FLIR. Sounds like the 60M guys got shafted with their avionics; the Rockwell Collins suite we have, although suffering from the same corruptible database problem, can hold 5 alternate flight plans, which you can reverse, the ability to build flight plans on the fly using the moving map, fully coupled approached to a hover, and stability augmentation systems like TRC and Phold. Amazing for brownouts.

I heard that a large gripe Sikorsky had was with the rotorwash and noise signature created by a Hook, claiming that it wasn't "tactically sound" for the CSAR role or some bullshit like that. Too bad. I would've gone green to blue in a heartbeat.

 

[bobbybrock]

The Army f&*cked up big time by not picking the CAAS. It was supposed to give the fleet some commonality. The HH-60 M will be the only a/c with a FLIR. Assault units will not have that or an external hoist. The Army med community is on this big FLIR kick. The HH-60L/M FLIR is nice. The add on system that most are getting sucks. It was the same system used for th Bahamas missions.
The MH-47 is a beast. It can do the mission better than the 60. Especially the 60M. I really don't see the air force gaining anything other than a few bells and whistles in the cockpit. I know that there are only a few HH-60M units out there. It will be interesting to see the after action review of their deployment to OEF.

 

[RobLyman]

Rumor is that the HH-60M is getting a new FLIR. We got a call last week saying it was coming. The 'when' part was omitted. Also coming soon is a software upgrade for the FMS in the next couple of weeks. The two new aircraft we picked up today did not have it, but people are scheduled to come out to our unit in a couple of weeks to install it. I'll pass on any significant improvements once I get my fingers on it.

Other news I heard today is the composite tail cone upgrade is going away. It did not pass ballistics testing and will be scrapped.

 

[bert]

There isn't any great mystery in the 47 vs 60 debate. 47's cost more both in the short term ($$/airframe with or without development costs factored in) and the long term (O and M). When you factor in the Air Force's recent track record in competitive procurements it is pretty easy to see why they would want to go this route.

 

[busdriver]

bert, I think you are spot on as to trying to avoid the competitive procurement process. Whether the "re-cap" gets us what we want/need or just a current spec Mike model remains to be seen.

 

[3rdgenav8tor]

From what I hear in the Army community, you have a lot of grey beards that flew the Alpha and Lima models who are having a very hard time making the adjustment from the steam gauges to the new MFDs. I wonder if this would be the same way for the guys in blue who are used to the G model.