16 more Chinooks for the RAF
 

Fat Tanks (?), EO/FLIR and MMR. Additional Mk.5, or similar but different?

UK To Acquire 16 Boeing Chinook Helicopters For $3.5 Billion

They will probably be flying when the Chinook design turns One Hundred Years old!

That is a pretty impressive life span for a design.

Are these additional to the current fleet?

Some of the earlier 'cabs' have been pretty hard used over the last few decades and I would have thought that the new aircraft, whilst sporting all sorts of new stuff and hence improved capability, will actually replace the original survivors.

The very early cabs went back to the US in about 1993 or so and have then been upgraded twice (?) since, so they are probably like the original broomstick which has just had three new shafts and four new brushes!

Old Duffer

Probably a good place to note that the first Chinook ever to land at Odiham did so 50 years ago this year, 1968. It was an early US Army Mk1 machine and of course created much interest. All the station Wheels were given a ride in it, much to the chagrin of us cogs and split pins who were left on the ground. The Flying Officers' Union had its revenge, however, because when the aircraft landed all the Wheels came out red-eyed and runny nosed; the hydraulic mist in the cabin had done for them all! To this day I haven't flown in a Chinook but I do have two Belvedere air tests in my logbook which I suspect many Chinook types would envy. :)

A very dear fellow named Jack Trigg regaled this Chinook Pilot with Belvedere Yarns many years ago as we quaffed the odd Pint after work hours in Redhill.

I very much miss his company as he was a joy to be around.

I suppose one day I might have to pay a real penance for all the fish and chip wrappers I stuffed under the passenger seat of his car as he drove us back to the Company Digs.

One flight in the Belvedere would have done me I am thinking.

My first ever helicopter flight (as talking ballast) was in a USAF Piasecki H-21 Shawnee....which resulted in a forced landing (I should have taken the hint!).

It's a good design, no need to make big changes. Apart from adding a couple of big rocket engines, obviously, that'll improve anything, even something that's already very good!

Or

Boeing CH-47A Chinook helicopter 65-07992.

I bet that was erm..... interesting

http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/hi...a_extended.jpg

http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/hi...07992/347a.jpg

Similar to the system in the Skycrane (CH-54 Tarhe)

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e3a501fafe.jpg

The original Mk3s came fully plumbed/bolted for AAR - IIRC we just didn't buy the probes, but would have when they were needed. Thanks to the short sighted nature of the FSTA contract (who honestly believed we'd never AAR helicopters?) we don't have a suitable "donor" platform. All things are, however, negotiable. CHF are also running around telling everyone that they will be bolting probes back on the Merlin (in order, no doubt, to let it lift off the QEC with a decent payload but no gas to tank while airborne….) without an organic tanker. If an agreement was reached with Air Tanker that a handful of SF configured C130s could tank RW only (for a suitable sum, naturally….) then we would be in business. Or, we simply borrow a C130 tanker from the USAF, USMC, Italians, French or Germans.

These frames will be the "pump primer" for a whole fleet recapitalisation. "What?" I hear you say, "Didn't we do that 8 years ago with JULIUS?". Errr, yes and no. Julius was never supposed to be a fleet fit, but the interests of a certain User community and a "use it or lose it" attitude to the Chinook CSP money at the time, forced the UK down a fleet-wide dead end due to the obsolescent centre panel instruments. We had designs to "digitise" the whole cockpit, but it was deemed "unaffordable", as were several pan-DLoD solutions. The purchase of the Gs gets the UK a world class capability, and clears a lot of the clearance/airworthiness hurdles for a fleet coherence project around the CH-47F Block 2. However, the current UK SH Chinook is a lot more mission capable than a US Army "Vanilla" F model. Those responsible for this work need to ensure in the pursuit of whole-life cost savings they don't seriously undermine what SH can do today, and let the User community know what they might be giving up capability wise to get a pretty cockpit and a flight director.

My guess is that 16 "lot 1" airframes will be retired and, in Tornado vernacular, RTP'd, as these Gs arrive. Hopefully, that will release ZA718 to her rightful permanent home at Hendon. I reckon we'll then buy 24 new build F Block 2s and, again, RTP the remaining lot 1 and 2 airframes. I would assume that the relatively new 14 Mk6s (CH-47F airframes) will simply have a refresh to bring them to the common Block 2 standard. That just leaves the 8 Mk5s - toss a coin whether you bin them as a savings option, update to the new baseline or buy an additional 8 frames to keep the fleet at the 60 aircraft mark.

Am I to presume that ZA718 is BN? She must have had quite a few adventures since 1982, especially in sandy places. What upgrades will she have had since then?

At the risk of opening a can of worms, last I heard was we had quite a few Chinooks in storage but couldnt get them certified post Mull of Kintyre.

But then again I've been out of the loop on this one for a while and am happy to be corrected. Anyone care to enlighten me on the outcome of that one? Hopefully without getting back into the enquiry debacle.

Cooch

Like helicopters, the price per unit seems to have risen since
Boeing delivered 48 CH-47Fs to the U.S. Army through August 2008; at that time Boeing announced a $4.8 billion contract with the Army for 191 Chinooks.

Icare9, your point partly answers Coochycool's question. In short, the US Army undertakes a lot of the work the UK asks Boeing/industry to do. One would expect their price to be very much lower. In 1992 the RAF Director of Flight Safety warned the Chief Engineer and ACAS of the effect of Boeing having no experience of being an 'offshore' Design Authority. Trying to contract Boeing in the same way we do (e.g.) Westland is a disaster waiting to happen. Hence, the root of many of the Mk3 problems.

Coochycool, your can is open. It was known immediately in 1994 that Mk2 was not airworthy and flying under a rogue RTS. This forced HQ, for once, to listen to Boscombe; who simply repeated what they'd said in 1987 after ZA721. If you keep on doing it this way, you can never get certification. Mk2 was first certified in January 1996, albeit with major limitations. By 1998 most of the biggies had been cleared.

How is this military stuff certified? Couldn't you take a stock US Army certified CH-47 and get it going in the UK right away? What does it take to recertify something existing? How did this work with the RAF RC-135W? I wonder about this for Germany too, we are set to get C-130J and possibly CH-47 as well - or new CH-53.

Note, Evalu8ter (correctly) didn't mention Boeing!

KK. Not everyone uses the same aircraft 'certification' system. The UK MoD has a 'limitations-based' one. Read across is seldom straight forward. For example, our Home Office dictates some quite important specifications and requirements, which a typical US standard would not (and do not) meet. (And if they claimed to, GCHQ and most of our designers would want to know how, as it's very difficult!). The anonymous and very lowly pleb in MoD who signs the concessions and production permits has a thankless job.