I hate to be critical when you are trying to be helpful, but in the case of the Mi-8 I do see the dual purpose civilian/military aspect. However, this platform was originally designed and developed for military purpose (first transport, then gunship) and it was later found to have civilian importance.

I am more concerned with the opposite of that situation. A civilian (rotary wing) platform that gets militarized. This way I can (hopefully) see some of the steps that were taken on the physical airframe and then draw parallels to support the militarization of the UH-72A.

Thanks for the information on the South American countries militarizing civilian aircraft, I will research this further. Is there any particular country in South America that engages in this behavior much more than the other countries?

My paper is almost done and anyone who wants to read the final draft can send me a private message.

Survivability isn’t a major issue with the UH-72A/EC-145.

This is exactly what I am trying to address. I want to take the UH-72A and see if certain measures can be done in order for it to address the requirements of the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) thus one platform performing two roles for the ARMY (hopefully saving time and money). In order for me to do that I have to address many issues including live fire/survivability since survivability is an issue for the ARH. There are other performance based aspects (required of the ARH) that I think the UH-72A is readily able to handle, but other aspects will require some modifications to the airframe of which I have extremely insufficient knowledge of.

As for responsibility, I suppose it depends on when in the helicopters life span the survivability occurs. If it is in initial procurement then it needs to be placed in the operational requirements.

OK, let’s assume the aircraft is in the procurement phase. Then it has to be in the customer-written-requirements that the airframe be survivable in a tactical environment. Which would therefore put the responsibility on the vendor to answer the requirements of survivability, correct? SO… vendors must have to take certain actions to improve civil airframes for military use, this is the type of information I need.

It is pretty difficult to find any data on the BK117M. I think I should abandon this line of thought and just stick to arming the EC145 (and making it survivable).

EDIT: I am actually still a bit confused over the BK117. Are there any variants of this platform that were armed BESIDES the BK117M (which was apparently never fielded) and if so by which country/organization?

There is more to it than adding just some kevlar mats. Besides beefing up the airframe, you have to armor all the mechanical and hydraulical flight control systems, the gearbox should get a run-dry capability, crew survivability has to be enhanced, the whole aircraft has to function over a wider temperature range than the civil version, things like that.

I think the temperature range is already fulfilled. Part of the crew survivability can be accomplished thru use of the Air Warror ensemble which is compatible with the current cockpit. I understand the mechanical and hydraulic flight control systems will have to go thru remodeling and testing.

I wonder if some of these pieces and parts have already gone thru live fire testing on the predecessor platforms that were in military use by other countries. Is it possible to get foreign comparative testing data from foreign militaries? Is data like that even public?

I would say no. The hardware requirements are too different.
The 407 is too small for the LUH requirements, and bringing an EC145 up to the same level of integration as the ARH-70 wouldn’t have been any cheaper than getting two airframes.

By integration do you mean the Mission Equipment Package, Target Acquisition, and Interoperability equipment? I am trying to figure out how much of that hardware is dependent on the physical airframe. If most of it has no reference to the airframe (other than physical real estate) then hopefully that COTS equipment can be integrated into the EC-635. Understanding those items is a little further down the road for me but I will consider any suggestions that might be “show-stoppers” for what I am trying to accomplish.

EDIT After re-reading what I posted I don’t know if the term “COTS” was correctly used.