Little Bird replacement
 

It appears for the modernising of 160th SOAR that the replacement for the A/MH-6 Little Bird will be another Little Bird for now.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...W7WuchsXeozC-k

Cheers

Sometimes you just reach into your toolbox and pull out your favorite hammer when you need to drive a nail.

One passage in the linked article stood out to me.....as I bleed Chinook having flown them in 1968....with one of them currently in the US Army Museum at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Who would have guessed the old girls would still be strutting their stuff a century later?

They have been talking about replacing the Little Bird for long long time - and nothing ever happens.

Soldier On
 

Out of this SOF Week in Tampa, is the knock on effect from FARA cancellation that an A/MH-6 Little Bird replacement is not going to happen.

https://www.defensenews.com/smr/sofi...-gi3MsImoJRbyS

cheers

Quite a tough and agile machine. What other type do we think might make a good modern basis to be modified to replace it?

From an earlier time but the book Low Level Hell by Hugh Mills is worth a read.
I came away amazed that any of the pilots or aircraft survived.

I have it - sits proudly on my shelf alongside Chickenhawk, Howard's Whirlybirds, Flak and Firebirds. Interestingly, the Low Level Hell book has just a black spine with no text or anything on it. Is your copy the same?

No, it has title, authors and publisher. It also has a small image representing Outcasts badge. Shown on the cover of the book.. A skull and crossbones with the word Outcasts above and the words Aero Scouts and Low Level Hell below.

Can you improve on perfection? I think they got it right first time. If you want no doors and guys sat outside on benches you aren't going to go much faster than 80 kts

It seems to me the 500 platform is unbeatable for getting into alleyways etc - once it gets there. They just need something that can 'keep up' with the bigger faster helos while getting to where the oil is where the bad guys are.

How about a smaller 109/119 type - single engine with retracts. A 109 cruises at the 500s Vne. You can keep the guys with beards and shades inside until you need them on the outside. When you get closer to the oil where the bad guys are - you open the doors, deploy spring loaded benches and they climb out, ready to 'operate' some freedom into whichever bad guys have the oil been naughty.

Bell have been working on the B429M for awhile now , lots of fitout and kits available for spec ops . Jamaica, Slovac Police, Turkish Security directorate all use kitted out 429's and the ADF was going to get 15 for the little bird type role before it was decided to dump the MRH and go with BH.

If you want to survive a crash the best option is the Loach.

Best story I ever heard was a Loach driver calling his Cobra team to get here quick because he's got guys running into a barn type structure. Becoming sick and tired of waiting on the Cobras he found the doors on the barn were large enough for him to take a look around inside, Cobras arrive to find no Loach in sight and promply busted the barn. Loach driver and crew mate then seen hobbling out of the barn.

Had two Loaches give me protection during a single ship extraction, was amazed on the climb out to see one on each side keeping formation while flying backwards and brassing up the extraction point with the mini guns, a quick pedal turn at some point at some forgotten speed and there they stayed. A Hoi Chanh told us the most feared helo was the Loach as they were not unknown to stick the mini gun barrel into the firing point of the VC hide out.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....21df15201a.jpg

At my younger brother’s interment in the Keene, NY Cemetery, the local VA Honor Guard included a slight, short man with a 1st Cav patch. Had a short conversation with him at the site and he said he’d join us for lunch, but didn’t. My sister told me he’d written a book about his time in Vietnam. I found it on Amazon: “ Easy Target “ , author Thomas Smith. It’s an excellent read, not only about the Loach flying ( he has a talent for describing situations ) but in telling his story, one gets a real exposure to the “ other costs “ of that war. Vietnam pilots will find their minds returning to yesteryear as they read this scout pilot memory.

I tip my hat to Vietnam War Loach Pilots and crew members...as they deserve admiration and respect having earned it the hard way at a very high cost.

Short story....

Young Sasless and crew in his Chinook was involved in moving an artillery battery during the Cambodia Incursion in 1970.

It was the start of Monsoon season and the weather deteriorated as we reached about the half way point of the move....with half the unit at each end of the route.

In those cases either you completed the move or returned the delivered loads back to the pickup zone (PZ).

The decision was made...continue the move and the weather forced us down low along a valley like depression between two lines of hills and we were making like bees going to the hive.

The local Nimby folks figured that out in no time at all...and provided us with a rather hostile protest.

I had cause to land immediately and wound up with my Chinook entangled in the perimeter barbed wire of a Fire Support Base (FSB) after what looked like an Navy style arrested landing..

As I walked around trying to get my knees to working again waiting on the Flight Engineer to assess the damage I saw a Loach and pair of Cobras that had shut down and were eating their lunch.

I approached them and asked if they were looking for new business and explained I knew exactly where they could find some....and offered to show them.

Into the Loach and off we go with murder on their mind and revenge on mine.

I pointed out the spot and the Loach Pilot began to do his thing.

Then the Cobras started doing their thing.

After just a couple of minutes all of the adrenaline that my earlier flyover of the spot had caused to be injected into my system wore off......and sanity, reason, and commonsense returned and I decided wisely that this was no place for a Chinook Pilot. My crying and whimpering and down right begging was for naught....it was lack of fuel that caused us to return to my aircraft. Drugs...legal,illegal, or natural (adrenaline)....can cause you to do some stupid things. I should have just made an "X" on a map and waved good bye to them as they flew off in search of it.

The perspective of flying at a height where one can actually see individual foot prints in a jungle trail is quite different from several thousand feet above the ground where you cannot even see the trail.

It also makes a two way rifle range where machine-guns get used by both sides in what is very much a close quarter engagement.

When you can see foot prints you can also see faces and gun muzzles.

My knee problem showed no improvement at all after that sight seeing flight.

Those guys did that kind of flying every day!

I was very glad to get back to my own dull and usually boring kind of flying.

That afternoon it ceased being dull and boring but that is another story.

I thought this quote was interesting:

"So we'll be looking at the things that we'd normally look at... So it'd be great to go after an advanced [rotor] blade," he added. "And so we're monitoring some commercial developments that we see out there and we'll probably be looking at those in the future."

Boeing flew the composite High Performance Rotor Blade back in 2013 with the intention of fitting it to the Block II MELB. It must not be working out as planned, as it sounds like they will look to other composite 500 blades available, like Van Horn and HTC.

500 Fan..

Boeing's history of blade design failures is fairly consistent.

CH-47F
https://www.defensenews.com/digital-...es-in-testing/

AH-64
https://www.defensenews.com/land/201...cal-to-safety/

SB-1
https://www.defensenews.com/digital-...ng-challenges/

XV-15 (Boeing designed and built ATB composite blade that failed in flight)
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uplo...04/sp-4517.pdf (p.81)

A quick Google search couldn't find "Flak and Firebirds" - could you post a cover image, or ISBN?

Probably separate books:

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/B...44072&dest=gbr


https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/671330