US Air Force looking for a replacement for the UH1H Huey.

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Captn Tommy Posted: Sat, Jan 2 2010 7:57 PM

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The other day on flightglobal (28 Dec 2009) was an article on the USAF looking for a off the shelf  (OTS) helicopter to replace their Hueys. Now here is a problem.

1. OTS means a lot of things to a lot of people but the US Defense Dept. sometimes gets OTS mixed up with "OTS with all the options in the world that we can possiblyy stuff into the machine, but we are not going to tell you in advance" which of course proved highly successful with the VH-71 (The Merlin but not really)
2. The Air Force does not seem to resently have had its collective act together when asking for or selecting a new aircraft. (KC-X, CSAR and versions of both) 

Now the helicopters must meet a slew of objectives to be selected (Read the article).  The Helicopterhas to lift  3194 Pounds of payload, fly 3hrs and cruise at 139 Knots. The article mentions the H-72 Lakota and the EC145 (basicly the same helicopter) the H-72 is the US Army's replace ment for the Huey  but without the USAF requirement to be armoured AND Its weight is a bit light unless the fuel weight is included in the 3194 lbs.

Actually there is only 2 aircraft to fit the bill that I can see (three if you include the Bell  412EP) the AW139/149 and the S-76.

The S-76 has some military experience in the AUH-76 Philippine Airforce, SAR S-76 in Hong Kong and several Middle Eastern countries. The PT6 powered H-76 was certified with the TOW missle and was the second helicopter flown with a Mast mounted sight (Very succesfully). At a gross weight of 11.400 lbs it Fits in the range of the USAF requirement. There are several articles on this version of the S-76 in the Flight archives in the 1980s.

The AW-149 is the miltarized version of the AW-139. I do not know that much about the AW-139 save its performance matches the S-76C++, I imagine in would fit the same performance envelope.

The S-76 has been proven as a light ARH (Actually light/medium), the AW-149 is being certified as I write, so the USAF maybe able to actually but anots aircraft with falling into the VH-71 trap.

Think About it...

Captn Tommy