View Full Version : French Airdrop in Mali
dragartist
2nd Feb 2013, 12:16
It is great to see how the French are deploying airdrop in Mali. Even a sim stick of troops. I wonder if this was staged for the media as a show of force.
Note they are using up life ex troop chutes for stores. I first saw this at DGA in Tolouse back in 1995. The clusters got tangled up and a small number of the loads piled in. Big cheer from us Brits on the DZ!
Our top guys at Boscombe suggested we used all our old chutes up like this when we were running short in Afg. Great idea but could not get past the clowns in charge who would rather keep the wheels of our industry greased making new ones. The same crowd now whinging about redundancies and other cuts. Bit late after being so wastefull in the past.
The great thing about the French aproach is should one small cute fail you still had 3 or more left. no need to bring them back for packing (another saving).
The UK of course has the ADUX D1 expendable (think of a parachute made from woven plastic sacking and bailer twine) which I remember the AD guys complaining about failing and resulting in them filling in MALDROP reports. The MOD Project team were also upset as these parachutes were failing to complete 10 drops. The Boscombe guys looked into it, thought about it, and said "What do you expect, they were only designed for one drop, two at the most, the clue is in the name expendable. Stop extracting the urine."
.. just watching the news. Until a week ago, apparantly, there was no music allowed in Mali for the yoof. Hollande hasn't had teenagers obviously, otherwise he would have embraced the tranquility and kept the troops at home.
dragartist
3rd Feb 2013, 12:11
Great words of wisdom VX. You and I are clearly like minded. ADUX was indeed low cost one shot. but a new one cost almost as much as an SC15 You are completely wrong about the project teams aspirations for multiple use. these things were costing us more to store and repack than they were worth. never got properly cleared on the J. unused ones were disposed of some time ago when we found we had more SC15s than you could shake a stick at. Never could find any good stats to quantify reliability for any UK AD system. All down to hearsay and uninformed opinion. Just like PPRuNe really!
Reinhardt
3rd Feb 2013, 13:51
That was a significant operation, involving about 300 tropers dropped, Colonel OC first in the good tradition, to cut the retreat of the islamists.
More than a couple of those have been zapped by the way - but medias try not to show that too much...
Transall and Hercules were used.
Since last real airdrops (Cassinga with SAAF in Angola in 1978, and Kolwezi with same French in 1978 in Zaire) nothing similar had happened...
Keep up the good work and clean the desert please.
StopStart
3rd Feb 2013, 14:12
dragartist - if memory serves, ADUX was cleared on the J. CDS from the J using SC15 from a wide spread of altitudes was/is both reliable and accurate (albeit colossally over-engineered and bastardised from the simple US system).
There are probably enough SC15s scattered about Helmand to clothe most of the population in fetching shiny green suits now.
Anyway, well done the Frenchies for just cracking on and getting the job done :ok:
Interesting video here on Mali
French paratroopers of 2e REP Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment were parachuted on Timbuktu - YouTube