Dili Black Hawk

[Blackhawk9]

The S-70A-9 when it came into service with the RAAF in 1988 then transfered to the Australian Army in 1990/91 was the most powerful advanced utility assault Helo in the world, the Aussie S-70 had the high output main xmissn from the Seahawk,Rotor brake, a rear avionics bay with access door (just on the M model 60 now), folding stabilator from Seahawk , Seahawk afcs systems and T700-701A-1 engines(the -1 is for fuel flow indication),Fuel dump,HIRSS and pilot seat blowers for hot climate (the envy of many other Blackhawk operators), and bloody useless sideways facing troop seats, ESSS, etc most of these features are only just going onto the UH60-M now 20 years later, our Blackhawks are still world class it's just the way we seem to operate them isn't!
of the 39 delivered we have had 6 crashes for 5 writeoffs ,4 of the 6 crashes were in Spec ops training and all of the crashes have been pilot error the helo has not been to blame in any of them, I have seen Norwegian Jaeger Kommando operating with Bell 412SP's and British and French Spec forces operating with 330's and the don't seen to fly beyond the Helo cpability,why do we!! the Aussie S-70's were having airframe cracks at about 2500 hrs that most other operators were getting about 4000hrs because of the way we operated them.
The S-70 is an extreamly powerful Helo both in engine and flightcontrol power during deck trials on the HMAS Tobruk in the early 90's it was almost impossible to over input controls and the test pilots said (RAAF and Navy) it had more flightcontrol authority than any other helo in the ADF and more the just about any other they had flown, and then I have seen pilots complain about T/R authority flying in New Guinea...... down wind approach into Mount Hagen(5500') I wonder why they have t/r problems!
And Fadec won't help the engines either ,if you pull the power in to late you will hit hard!! and if you have to much power you will over torque or overpitch.
As Twin Huey man said in another Blackhawk post the Blackhawk is a very powerful easy to fly helo and pilots get themselves into trouble when they fly beyond the helo something Kiowa, Huey ,330, and 412 pilos don't do as they know from scratch they are flying an a/c with limits something Blackhawk pilots forget.
I hope the Australian Army changes its attitude to the way it flies especialy the Spec Ops role because if they try and fly a NH-90 like a Blackhawk they will roll a lot more into balls as the NH 90 will not handle the abuse a Blackhawk has taken.