a lot has been said about the age of the sea king fleet. 35.

these sea sprites are made from 40+ year old airframes and are now and always have been pieces of crap.

the australian taxpayer handed over more than a billion dollars to its greatest ally for 10 aircraft, can you believe it. our military is the laughing stock of the world. a disgrace.

to add to all of this is the problems with the tiger that are also becoming an embarrassment as we fall well behind schedule on delivery. they don't work very well either.:yuk: :yuk: :ugh: :yuk:

G'day imabell,

That'll be $1b for 11 aircraft !!! That'd buy a lot of (any) civil aircraft. I can never see the value(??) in what we pay for military helicopters.

Cheers,

MPT

Sorry guys but that is one ugly heli! And i fly the ugliest!!!:ouch:

Imabell said "... sea sprites are made from 40+ year old airframes and are now and always have been pieces of crap"

40 years old, in USN service for over 35 of them and active in Vietnam (as a single-engine SAR bird) and every stoush the U.S. has been involved in since.

Interestingly the UH-2A was the mount of the first naval aviator to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour in Vietnam (LT Clyde Everett Lassen - Google the name, makes for interesting reading).

The USN didn't seem to think they were crap (in their time). Obviously you had less fortune when you flew the H-2, to have come away with such feelings. How about sharing your experiences?:E

Squidly.

p.s. This post in no way endorses the performance, or otherwise, of the SH-2G(A) That's (A) for Australia.

RAN + Birdy problems = strangle the morale chicken!
 

Spare a thought for the boys in the RAN at the moment. Shark 02, Sea sprite, problems with OFT's. It would be an interseting place to be a "birdy" at the moment.

Max


:ugh:

...again. :(

your right squidly, i was a bit over the top there. i am sure they served the usn well.

why do we need them?, we have nothing to protect, no aircraft carriers, no battleships, no cruisers. just a few destroyers and a couple of other boats. not much in the scheme of things. just toys for the boys to play with. and they are already broken.

now the tigers we are getting are suffering from major operational problems like, "it wont start sir", "the tv's not working sir",
the first one we had (demonstrator) was written off during a demonstration, because it wouldn't do what the pilot asked it to. they are months behind delivery at a million dollars a week i am told.

and what are we going to do with them if they ever do work properly???:D :D :ugh: :ugh:

At least in Australia when they make a huge ^%$#up like this you know it is just because they are incompetent, not because George Bush's or Dick Cheneys' second cousin's company makes the after market torpedo pods that fit the machine.
Why the ^%$# is our planet so intent on spending so much money on **** to kill people? If the money were spent on poverty there would be no need for a "defence" force.:confused:
I am not sure why I bothered throwing that in, I would say that there is more chance of Muhamid Ali shoving a pound of butter up a wild cats ass with a red hot skewer then that ever happening. Can only hope.
"Seasprite" It even sounds like a lemon.:8

Imabell - no probs. I tell myself at least a million times a day not to go over the top (and still do).:)

As to "Why do we need them?" that's a question I would hope gets a really good airing - before we spend/spent 1 billion dollars. All I do know is, they obviously didn't ask you, me or bellfast.

Regardless of the saga behind the Seasprite (and Tiger for that matter), I'm very much with Maxeemum - You've got to wonder how our fellow aviators at Nowra are feeling at the moment and sympathise with them - They've had a crap year (or 2, 3, .....):(

Squidly.

Good call

"Sea-Sprite", like regular sprite but now with a dash of Lemon.

(Hey over in NZ they can only dream of having a budget big enough for Tigers, RNZAF still flying the Bell 47)

Everyone wondered why it seemed to be only Egypt and other easily bribed countries that had bought the Seasprites..
Just buy what the States operates at least it wil have proven itself somewhere.

If it ain't broke
 

Its a bid of a sad tale of an overly ambitious 'wish list' it would seem. The new Zealanders are using off-the-shelf sprites no probs, the trouble with ours is the one off, all singing all dancing avionics they tried to shoe horn into the machines.

Got to love those side doors. Ive always wanted a bedford van like the posties used to have. Lets strip em out and go mustering.

I hesitate to come to the Tiger's defense, but I thought the Townsville crash in '98 (an EC-owned machine, not an ADF bird) was attributed to the pilot losing situational awareness at night ? That aside, the ADF found itself trapped in the position of being the first user of the Tiger when the French and German programs were delayed - keep in mind that, at the time the ADF selected the type in August 2001, initial deliveries to the ALAT were still planned for mid-2003, 18 months before the ADF was due to receive its first aircraft.

The power issue was always a clear & present danger, since the Tiger was designed for combat over the Fulda gap, not in 95F temps, and one surely has to believe that the ARH was always eventually intended to use the same upgraded engine being developed for the Spanish HAD variant once it became available (~2008) ?

As for the SH-2A(G) itself, much has been written over the past 9 years, but the original premise of the program (a compact shipboard helo) was lost when the proposed OPV replacement for the Freemantle class was scrapped in 1997 shortly after the selection of the Seasprite itself. Litton's withdrawal, the subsequent scramble to recover the mission suite, obsolescence issues resulting from the associated delays and the fact that 7 of the 11 aircraft were built in 1965-67 simply added to the program's woes.

Of course, Kaman's bid was originally A$200M lower than WHL's new-build Lynx offering, but I suspect that difference has already been eaten-up by the various players (mainly Kaman's shareholders).

The SH-2A(G) also never really fit with the 'consolidation' rationale of Air9000. Let's just hope MRH-90 lives up to expectations.

I/C

ADF Chief's:
"..yes, it's very nice, but we want half of that one, and half of that one. Just bolt them togther"
"..errr, you can't do that sir"
"..sure you can, she'll be right"
"Right then, what's for lunch?"
It's the same conversation over, and over and over and......:ugh:

NZ watching closely
 

I'm sure the NZ-DF ? is watching closely to pickup another bargain from the incompetant Oz mil hierarchy.

odds on they'll buy them off us for less than half what we paid,
get them working properly on a shoe-string budget (they'll have plenty from the savings in original procurement), then flog them back to us at 3 or 4 times the rate....:bored:

de ja vu the CT4 & A-4s
something about being promoted to your highest level of incompetantcy...;)

Notwithstanding how the Aussie Seasprite got this far, what's the call then:

1. Burn and bury 'em; or

2. Spend another squillion to see what they can really do?

Burn them.
Sell tickets to burning.
Use ticket funds to buy the Huey Gunship recently retired from Army to do the job.
Spend squillions on piss for gunship pilots/gunners.
Everyone wins. Morale problem gone......:ok:

Helmet Fire,
You, your mates nor your Huey could hack operations off a small ship out of sight of land!
GAGS
E86

Eagle 86, the small ship you operated off was our top War Canoe, HMAS Melbourne, wasn't it? Small by anybody's standards, and barely capable of getting out of sight of land.

Anyway, couldn't we get Macquarie Bank to run the defence forces?

They could buy all those 40-year old F-111s sitting in the Arizona desert, slap a coat of paint on them and sell them to Oz, claiming a $400 million spotter's fee. Then they cancel the F-35 order, pay the cancellation fee, and claim a management fee of $400 million. When Boeing Defence announces bankruptcy over the lost orders, buy them up at a bargain price, reinstate the F35 order, share price goes up again, sell at the peak and cancel the order again. Claim another big fee, pay the managers a bonus.

Sell the RAAF, navy and army bases for real estate. Any RAAF staff still staying in can move to what's left of Bankstown and use their flying pay to pay for some flying in R22s or C152s to keep current. Army HQ can be moved to a really secure top-secret bomb-proof location in the under-utilised Cross-City Tunnel, charge each person $3.37 to get through the toll gates to get to work. MacBank buys the Snowy River scheme and Warragamba Dam with the proceeds, sell the Warragamba sludge water to the Snowy scheme, boosting its share value. Sell at the peak, just before the water runs out. Buy again when the price bottoms out. Give all MacBank directors a performance bonus. Empty dams and dry rivers declared surplus to requirements, sell to Chinese interests for storage of nuclear waste. Another round of bonuses, please...:yuk:

Fair cop e86.
There is only one reason you would want to be on a small boat out of sight of land and surrounded by men with beards......:8

AC...you were not in defence procurement by chance were you...sounds like a project blue print!!