The US Air Force (USAF) has logged its final active service flight with the venerable Sikorsky HH-60G Pave Hawk combat search and rescue (CSAR) helicopter.
The service’s 56th Rescue Squadron completed the sortie on 18 December 2024 at Aviano air base in Italy, according to the USAF’s European headquarters.
Video footage released by the air force shows a three-ship flight of Pave Hawks, filmed by a fourth aircraft, in close formation over the jagged summits of the Italian Dolomites. The rotorcraft later set down in a snow-covered alpine meadow with rotors turning, while crew members posed for photos.
“Today marks the end of an iconic chapter in our air force history, with the final active-duty HH-60G flight,” said Colonel Beau Diers, deputy commander of the Aviano-based 31st Fighter Wing, which operates two squadrons of Lockheed Martin F-16s.
The Pave Hawk rescue squadron had provided CSAR capability to the fighter wing, with its primary mission being the recovery of downed pilots. Throughout Washington’s long years of counter-insurgency warfare in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, air force rescue squadrons also provided casualty evacuation support to ground combat troops.
The type also saw use in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance missions.
“The HH-60G provided countless lifesaving rescue operations around the globe,” Diers notes. “As we transition to the HH-60W, we remember the G’s proud history while looking forward to an even brighter future with increased combat capabilities.”
The air force has contracted with Sikorsky to deliver HH-60W Jolly Green II Combat Rescue Helicopters as a successor to the ageing Pave Hawk, which first entered service in 1982 as the MH-60G special operations rescue platform.
Among the improvements on the new Jolly Green II design are a larger cabin, increased range, improved avionics package, additional armour protection and modernised threat detection and countermeasure systems for enhanced survivability. An enlarged 2,438 litre (644USgal) main fuel tank (versus the Pave Hawk’s 1,363 litre tank) provides the HH-60W an unrefuelled combat radius of 195nm (361km).
Sikorsky describes the “Whiskey” model HH-60 as building upon the success of the Pave Hawk.
”We look forward to continuing our partnership with the US Air Force to provide the best possible search and rescue capabilities,” the company tells FlightGlobal.
Current plans listed in 2025 air force budget documents call for the service to acquire 75 Jolly Green IIs, marking a substantial reduction from the original Combat Rescue Helicopter programme covering 113 examples.
Aviano air base received its first batch of the new HH-60Ws on 13 December, with a final tranche set to be fielded in October this year.
Although it appears similar in appearance to the company’s iconic UH-60 Black Hawk, Sikorsky describes the HH-60W as the Pentagon’s first purpose-built CSAR helicopter. Earlier offerings like the Pave Hawk and the Vietnam-era Sikorsky HH-3E (the original Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter) were modified versions of existing models.
Sikorsky began delivering HH-60Ws in 2020, with 59 examples delivered as of January. The company says it received an order from the USAF in September covering 10 additional aircraft under production Lot 6.
The air force declared initial operational capability on the Jolly Green II fleet in 2022, with the type completing its first combat mission later that year in the Horn of Africa.
In January 2024, the air force posted footage of two Pave Hawks being loaded into a Lockheed Martin C-5M Super Galaxy strategic lifter for transport to the famous “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona for retirement and storage.
See video from the US Air Force’s final active duty flight of the Sikorsky HH-60G Pave Hawk:
