So they are trying to revamp the old Sea Wraith design huh? Fair enough!
BAe Sea Wraith concept design for the Type 45 destroyer
Guess it seems to be the concensus that the NH-90 in any and all versions is “The Way Forward” as GWB like to put things these days. I too would take it for the Support and Combat element of the Naval helo force, but I’d choose the A-109LUH as my training helo, simply because it has a small offencive role capability as well as some capacity as a support helo, thus I’d refelcet my tarining sylabus along the lines of the following:
Promotion from basic flight school to Helo Training School (A-109’s), the prospective pilots would then spend two years there:
6 months learning about helo ops at sea (theory)
6 months learning to fly helos culminating with six weeks at sea training.
6 months flying in a support role and finally
6 months learning ASW/ASuW tactics
Graduation from the training school would see the pilot then branch out to either “Support School” (A55 and Trash hauling) or Combat School (Jocks with rocks) where they learn more advanced tactics in their chosen fields. With this sort of schooling, you are ensuring that should the unthinkable happen and a helo does go down from the combat section, then a Support section crew is able to cover the job (albeit not as well- but some coverage is better than none at all right?).
Support school would also cover adventurous missions such as SAR, CSAR and Black Ops missions, so it’s not all bad for that section.
But when it comes to talking about the NH-90’s, I would take the MRH-90 (Aussie/ New Zealand) version. These machines are fully marinised and capable of deploying with everything the NH-90TTH and NH-90NFH have to offer. We have basically done the same thing with these machines as we did with the Seahawks (reference to the RAWS), turned them into Hybrid machines that cover both jobs.
Personally, I wish our respect of Militaries would have less platforms! As the resources saved could be better used elsewhere…………..
All due respect my dear friend but down here we have AIR 9000, a requirment to cut down on the number of airframes being used by the Army and Navy (our Air Force doesn’t have helo’s since they were all transfered to the Army in the mid 90’s)
The aim of AIR 9000 was to select a common replacement for both services with just one type of helo, the winner the MRH-90 version of the NH-90
Sneak preview: A full-scale mock-up of the MRH 90 on display in Townsville.
We have ordered 46 of these which are to replace the Army’s Black Hawks and Navy’s Seakings
The first 12 were bought some time ago and then a series of major accidents with these two types force the government to allow 34 more to be ordered. Eurocopter has it’s facility in Brisbane where our machines are being built (as are those for the Royal New Zealand Air Force- still can’t believe that they bought so few).
The eventual types to be replaced by the MRH-90 are as follows:
While some of these machines have some time left on their clocks, the Blackhawks and Seakings are way past their replacement time (our BH’s have been used so extencivly that they are almost time expired and it was felt that rather than zero hour them again- we’d replace them with a better machine)
The Joke that has turned out to be the Seasprites has prompted questions of the NFH-90 version being bought sooner and these jokes being dismissed before even deploying on their first operational mission- mind you, that threat still stands!
Yes we still have some old Huey’s in service, you’d be silly to take them all out as soon as you get a Blackhawk. The bulk of our UH-1 fleet is based over seas in places like Bouganville- PNG and other regional hot spots (The Solomons).
Sorry I’ve done it again, typed up a huge long reply that sounds like me rambling on.
Sign In
