Swedish A109

Thought that we could have a little discussion about this bird. I’ll start off saying it might be a nice bird for civilian users but it’s absolutely useless in the Swedish Armed Forces in the year of 2006. Let me elaborate;

1. The (much delayed) A109 LUH, or hkp15 as the swedes call it, was from the beginning intended for basic helicopter training. Problem is that today we can see the european countries teaming up on such training, which is why the swedish government at this very moment is discussing a joint european helicopter training school in Germany instead of a national one. Also, it was thought as a lead in trainer for the bigger NH90 helicopter, or hkp14 as the swedes call it. This was before they realized that the two of them differ way to much to make it possible becoming an expert on both the NH90 and the A109.

2. Troop transports. Ok, 5 guys can get a ride, that makes it a non-suitable platform for anything else than special ops and medevac. Due to the morons in the government, military helicopters aren’t used for civilian ambulance flights anymore. Instead they are paying civilian companies for this and they are ofcourse using their own helos. That limits it’s usefulness even more.

3. Then we have the Navy version, intended for ASW amongst others. Equipped with a load of sonobouys you really do wonder how useful it would be? Todays ASW fleet is capable of using sonobouys, active sonars, sink bombs and torpedos so the A109 can merely be a complement to those. Not even a good complement considering it’s lack of endurance.

4. SAR. During which weather conditions / sea state? And what about it’s endurance? Clearly, the NH90 will be the preferred choice of any SAR team.

5. International operations. Yeah, let’s send a helicopter which haven’t even been ordered with a proper ballistic protection kit against vanilla Kalashnikovs to Afghanistan.

I think one of the swedish A109 pilots sums it up pretty good without even knowing it when he said “I’ts like a Ferrari in the sky!”. As if the armed forces need a Ferrari..

Comments?

Regards,
Cliff