Gordon Brown to repair foreign helicopters

[Oldlae]

Seen on The Sun website - Gordon Brown to offer to repair helicopters belonging to foreign air forces and then borrow them to use in Afganistan.
Is he serious? Why not use some of the machines in the Helicopter Museum in Weston-Super-Mare.

[r44raven]

I didn't realise he was CAA BCAR rated - probably a good career move just now, though;)

[Impress to inflate]

I typical tight arsed Jock, borrow rather than buy.

[Freewheel]

There's some Seasprites going cheap, if he could be bothered talking to another government direct rather than negotiating by press release....

[The Nr Fairy]

Do you have a link either to the story, or a calendar ?

[Salusa]

Here is the link to the news article.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/article980117.ece

Worryingly the date of it is 31st March!!

[chopper2004]

Unless I am misinterpreting the article but the bit I highlighted

"French President Nicolas Sarkozy privately hinted he will back the move during his visit to London last week.
Countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary have been forced to mothball helicopters because they cannot afford to repair them.
A senior government source said: “The UK-French proposal will be to set up a trust fund in Nato to which wealthier countries contribute to get more helicopters of the right kind and equipment into Afghanistan.”


Does this read as we will be having MI-35 /MI-17???:D:):} operating in RAF or AAC roundels. Then again throw in some SAGEM avionics or Elbit and we'll be laughing:=


In all seriousness I recall a Defence and Public Service Helicopter article in 2003/4 somewhere in March/April issue and mentioned some RAF pilots as well as the USAF AFSOCOM crews being sent to Kremenchug Flight College in the Ukraine to have flight training on the MI-17.

http://www.shephard.co.uk/Rotorhub/default.aspx?Action=745115149&ID=2698d83c-3bb0-46fc-893e-d93bebed69ad

[HEDP]

I am sure the UK military would prefer to see the investment in their own fleets as a lack of spares provisioning and technicians is preventing the deployment of many of our own helicopters.

Still why fix your own when you can squander the money on someone elses assets!

HEDP

[Bladecrack]

Countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary have been forced to mothball helicopters because they cannot afford to repair them

What about the 8 CH47's the MOD bought years ago that have been hangar ornaments ever since. I seem to remember reading recently that a multi £million contract had been awarded to get them operational ...

[chopper2004]

Bladecrack,

They were originally Chinook HC3, based on the special operations MH-47E
(funnily enough in this week's Flight International theres a special on the CH-47F and a cutaway poster on the MH-47G)

And rightly so stashed at Boscombe Down since arriving on the docks since 99..anyhow problems with IFR and there was a rumor of the US Army wanting to buy back what we had, to help them replace attrition losses in Enduring Freedom and therefore we would get the MH-47G (based on the F model) at a later date.

Now the HC-3s been modernized to fit in with the standard from beans to bullets role and ash and trash hauling to help with the JHC SHF.

Also bear in mind that recently the new SAR AW-101 for Denmark were called back and put in the newly reformed 78 Sqn at Benson (as 78 had previously been the combined SAR Sea king and Chinook unit in the Falklands).

Also there was talk by FB Heliservices along with Eurocopter to provide a COMR kind of solution top boost up numbers for the SHF...probably lease out EC225 or something like that (my guess) like the DHFS Squirrels , Griffins...

[Oldlae]

Perhaps FBH could offer the Bristow ex-SAR S61Ns now that the contract is with CHC.

[chopper2004]

Hi Oldlae

Funny what you said considering its April Fools Day:ugh:

Doubt the 61 would survive in the dusty sandy environments:cool:

Nice thought though:D

[chopper2004]

Bladecrack

Here is the proof in the pudding for the CHinook HC3 active now flying around , below

http://www.airliners.net/photo/UK---Air/Boeing-Chinook-HC3/1336036&photo_nr=212&prev_id=1336072&next_id=1336035&size=L


http://www.airliners.net/photo/UK---Air/Boeing-Chinook-HC3/1336035&photo_nr=213&prev_id=1336036&next_id=1336033&size=L

[Oldlae]

Chopper2004,
Your answer reminded me of the American operation which floundered in the desert in Iran, in 1981 I believe.
But seriously, if the supply chain has gone badly for the Apache, just think how the supply from Russia would pan out, it's possible that the spares could be withdrawn as they liked.

[MartinCh]

He better fix other things. Thanks to his shadow tax increase (no 10% band and then 22%, rather 20% now flat tax from tax free allowance up to whatever I don't care). So anyone not so rich/high earner, part time workers over 5k pa, we're all being taxed up to 200 gbp pa more. Nice..

Czech Rep, well, hate those ugly Mi copters. There's bunch of them in former communist countries. There's few nice choppers around, not many.
Don't remember Heli international's stats.

Happy April Fools day. Let us save from fools the rest of the year

[SASless]

Darn....that must be a new record....a fleet of nine year old helicopters with a fleet total flight time of less than a hundred hours or so. Even Royal flights around the world fly more than that on one or two aircraft.:uhoh:

[Bladecrack]

Here is the proof in the pudding for the CHinook HC3 active now flying around

Looks good :ok:

BC