New Chinooks at Odiham

[[email protected]]

Spies in the camp suggest that 3 new Chinooks have arrived at Odiham recently - great news but they appear to have come without engines, transmissions, wiring, avionics or anything - in fact just the plastic wrapped airfames!

Surely someone hasn't tried to penny-pinch by assuming the spares already in existence would be sufficient to 'home-build' these aircraft - that would be unfeasibly stupid - wouldn't it???

[Daysleeper]

Maybe it's one of those magazines,

Build your own Chinook

each week this great publication will take you, step by step, through how to construct the worlds leading medium/heavy lift helicopter. 1st edition The Fuselage just £1.99*


*requires 9,000,000 weekly editions for complete set, subsequent editions £5.99.

Bargin

[Always a Sapper]

While they made great noise about buying more Chinooks I can't remember just where in the Govt statement they actually mentioned them as being operational.

I suppose that you could, just about in civil service spin speak describe the hull as being a Chinook.... Especially if your audience come from the red top readership / Jeremy Kyle show end of the spectrum.

The bloke down the pub wot knows someone's brothers mate that lives near Odiham and once worked there said that they are going to strip out the oldest three airframes and use the bits to build up the new ones.

[jamesdevice]

see www.raf-ff.org.uk/images/library/files/MOD_Top_Level_Messages_Oct_11.doc


"On 22 August 2011, the Defence Secretary announced a contract award for 14 new Chinook helicopters. The contract with Boeing to supply the Chinook heavy lift helicopters will provide a capability and resilience for operations now and in the future. Already the largest fleet in Europe, this new contract will bring the UK’s overall number of Chinooks to 60."

So how many are there at the moment?

[MG]

Errr, 60-14 = 46.

[jamesdevice]

yeah - but the implied suggestion above was that some of those 14 may be replacements for / rebuilds of earlier airframes

[[email protected]]

Well they are new and they are Chinooks so they probably fill the terms of some poorly written contract - they are just not what most people would expect to arrive in the post when they had ordered new Chinooks

[tucumseh]

Don't know if the same term is used, but the Apaches were delivered as "air vehicles". Engines were contracted separately I think (RR?). The main reason was the avionics offered by the US had to be respecified when another project office (AH didn't have any avionics people) pointed out much of what was being offered was obsolescent, some with "repair by cannibalisation" maintenance policies since the early 80s. Bendix 221 radio was one example. The contract for aircraft that actually flew was hastily changed. And a 4 man avionics section was formed.

[[email protected]]

I saw creative contract fulfilment when the AH were delivered to Middle Wallop - there was only one Multi Function Display in the country due to a dispute with a sub-contractor - AW fitted it to an Apache, flew it to MW, ticked the box, wheeled it into the hangar, took out the MFD (effectively making the aircraft useless), drove it to Yeovil, fitted it to another Apache and repeated the process several times. The result was that the AAC signed off delivery for several Apaches that they couldn't fly and AW met their contract terms and got paid!

[jamesdevice]

but if I remember correctly the Apaches couldn't be used anyway because the simulator was years late... so you had no-one trained to fly them.
Thats not a excuse - though they may have used it as such

[dervish]

tuc & crab

Scandalous, but somehow unsurprising.



jamesdevice

Was the sim not late because of a commercial decision to PFI it, meaning everyone knew the ISD could not be met?



Rumour has it the head of the MoD contracts branch that negotiated all this suddenly left MoD to work for AW. Intimate knowledge of the shenanigans would allow any contractor to take us to the cleaners.

[jamesdevice]

Dervish
your memory re the Apache training project and simulator would appear to be correct
Lack of pilots leaves new Army helicopters grounded | Mail Online

As the service provider for the PFI is a Boeing/Westland joint venture company, it makes your last comment rather worrying. If he did indeed move as you suggest, then the suggestion of "graft" would certainly be as worth investigation as that of Liam Fox.
How is it that only politicians get "outed" in this way, and not the civil servants - who are arguably better placed to affect contracts