thedrifter
08-23-05, 06:24 AM
Mothballed choppers will be updated for war
Marines are addressing shortage of heavy-lift craft by taking 3 copters out of storage.
The Associated Press
The Marine Corps is coping with a shortage of heavy cargo helicopters by dusting off choppers that have been mothballed in Tucson for a decade and retrofitting them for service.
Civilian maintenance workers at the Naval Air Depot at the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station this week will start cleaning and updating three shelved Navy MH-53E Sea Dragons stored until last week at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. It could take 20 months to transform them into the Marine version of the aircraft, the Super Stallion.
The Marines have been forced into taking the extraordinary step because they have only 150 of their only heavy-lift workhorses left in their fleet. Six Super Stallions have been destroyed in crashes since 2001, and the rest are logging long hours in the air in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"They're coasting on legacy fleets," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group, an aerospace and defense consulting company in Fairfax, Va. "They planned to coast indefinitely ... and it would have worked just fine if it hadn't been for Afghanistan and Iraq."
The Super Stallion can carry up to 55 Marines long distances and can use slings to transport heavy equipment such as Humvees or even small armored vehicles.
A replacement helicopter, designated the CH-53X, is in the works, but it will probably be at least a decade before the new choppers are deployed, said John Milliman, a helicopter acquisition programs spokesman at Patuxent River Marine Air Station in Maryland.
At least part of the solution to the Super Stallion shortage, Milliman said, could involve the 14 other rebuildable helicopters sitting at Tucson's AMARC.
The site, picked for the low rainfall and humidity and the alkaline soil that holds corrosion to a minimum, is a combination junkyard and storage lot for military and Coast Guard aircraft that can be brought back into U.S. service or sold to allies.
Last week, three dark-gray Sea Dragons sat on a concrete apron outside the Cherry Point depot's hangars after arriving from Arizona. Their rotor blades, exterior fuel tanks and various hatches were detached. Their rear loading ramps bared the interiors, which contained larger parts such as tail fins.
The depot's civilian workers perform major maintenance on helicopters for the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps as well, as the Marines' vertical-takeoff Harrier jets and the presidential helicopter fleet. They are adept at maintaining aircraft that have been out of production for decades by building new parts or devising techniques to replace components.
The reconditioning task on the Sea Dragons is so unusual that depot workers will start with just one aircraft this week and build a body of experience before starting on the other two, said Dan Anthony, who schedules work on the aircraft.
The depot expects to put all three helicopters back in service in top condition for $15 million, operations director Lt. Col. A.P. Camele said. That compares with the $105 million estimated cost for each V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor or the $30 million the last new Super Stallions cost when production ended in 1999.
The refurbished helicopters should last as long as others in the fleet with the same hours. One has about half its service life left, the others about one-third.
Ellie
http://p089.ezboard.com/bthefontmanscommunity
Marines are addressing shortage of heavy-lift craft by taking 3 copters out of storage.
The Associated Press
The Marine Corps is coping with a shortage of heavy cargo helicopters by dusting off choppers that have been mothballed in Tucson for a decade and retrofitting them for service.
Civilian maintenance workers at the Naval Air Depot at the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station this week will start cleaning and updating three shelved Navy MH-53E Sea Dragons stored until last week at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. It could take 20 months to transform them into the Marine version of the aircraft, the Super Stallion.
The Marines have been forced into taking the extraordinary step because they have only 150 of their only heavy-lift workhorses left in their fleet. Six Super Stallions have been destroyed in crashes since 2001, and the rest are logging long hours in the air in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"They're coasting on legacy fleets," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group, an aerospace and defense consulting company in Fairfax, Va. "They planned to coast indefinitely ... and it would have worked just fine if it hadn't been for Afghanistan and Iraq."
The Super Stallion can carry up to 55 Marines long distances and can use slings to transport heavy equipment such as Humvees or even small armored vehicles.
A replacement helicopter, designated the CH-53X, is in the works, but it will probably be at least a decade before the new choppers are deployed, said John Milliman, a helicopter acquisition programs spokesman at Patuxent River Marine Air Station in Maryland.
At least part of the solution to the Super Stallion shortage, Milliman said, could involve the 14 other rebuildable helicopters sitting at Tucson's AMARC.
The site, picked for the low rainfall and humidity and the alkaline soil that holds corrosion to a minimum, is a combination junkyard and storage lot for military and Coast Guard aircraft that can be brought back into U.S. service or sold to allies.
Last week, three dark-gray Sea Dragons sat on a concrete apron outside the Cherry Point depot's hangars after arriving from Arizona. Their rotor blades, exterior fuel tanks and various hatches were detached. Their rear loading ramps bared the interiors, which contained larger parts such as tail fins.
The depot's civilian workers perform major maintenance on helicopters for the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps as well, as the Marines' vertical-takeoff Harrier jets and the presidential helicopter fleet. They are adept at maintaining aircraft that have been out of production for decades by building new parts or devising techniques to replace components.
The reconditioning task on the Sea Dragons is so unusual that depot workers will start with just one aircraft this week and build a body of experience before starting on the other two, said Dan Anthony, who schedules work on the aircraft.
The depot expects to put all three helicopters back in service in top condition for $15 million, operations director Lt. Col. A.P. Camele said. That compares with the $105 million estimated cost for each V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor or the $30 million the last new Super Stallions cost when production ended in 1999.
The refurbished helicopters should last as long as others in the fleet with the same hours. One has about half its service life left, the others about one-third.
Ellie
http://p089.ezboard.com/bthefontmanscommunity