From last month's
Rotor & Wing:
Training Role for Lakotas
“The TH-67 fleet has no dollars to sustain it,” revealed [Maj. Gen. Kevin Mangum, commanding general of U.S. Army Aviation], “so we need to do something different.” The way he had asked the [Army's joint budget planning team] committee was to think in terms of how Army Aviation was comprised – and that came to no single-engine aircraft. “Flight school has not changed significantly since the 30 years I went there,” said Mangum, referring to the actual flight training not the synthetic systems, which have seen dramatic improvement. “If we don’t have a single-engine aircraft in the fleet, how many touch-downs and auto-rotations do we have to do? The [Airbus Helicopters] UH-72 Lakota will fit if we change our flight school model and the digital cockpit will help our young pilots transition to the digital cockpits they will have to fly [when they reach their units].”
But these new aircraft would have to be taken from both the active and reserve components to fill the Fort Rucker, Ala., requirement (Army Aviation Center of Excellence). “The good thing is that they are bought and paid for. This will reduce logistics support for the distributed fleet and the op tempo we will put on the fleet will reduce the dollars per hour in the long run,” he said. The plan was to take half of the requirement each from the Army and National Guard, although the 100 LUHs equipped for border guard missions would stay where they are.
Originally Posted by Stinger10
Does anyone else in the world fly it in this role as an initial trainer?
No (the USNTPS has five, but not for Initial); the closest is probably the German Army, which uses the BO105 as its initial trainer (likely to be replaced by the EC135 as the 105 retires). The Australian Defence Force is also about to replace the Kiowa with a twin (reportedly the
EC135) as its sole RW trainer, following in the footsteps of the JMSDF, which is in the process of replacing its OH-6Ds with the
TH-135.
I/C