US Coastguard Jayhawk programme issues
 

U.S. Coast Guard Cuts MH-60T Jayhawk Service Life, Grounds Helicopters

Craig Hooper
Senior Contributor
Craig Hooper evaluates security threats and proposes solutions.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/craigho...s-helicopters/
Aug 30, 2024,10:47am EDT
Updated Aug 30, 2024, 11:13am EDThttps://imageio.forbes.com/specials-...afe&width=1440
The Coast Guard's Jayhawk Fleet Is In Trouble

In a surprise move, the U.S. Coast Guard abruptly cut the service life of their MH-60T Jayhawk Medium Range Recovery Helicopters from 20,000 hours to 19,000. As a result, six high-hour aircraft were immediately grounded, taken out of service in mid-August. If the Jayhawk’s service-life adjustment is permanent, the Coast Guard’s already stressed helicopter fleet will soon face serious operational challenges.

The Coast Guard, in a statement, confirmed the helicopters were taken out of service, saying that it “anticipates no immediate impacts on search and rescue capabilities.” But with the Coast Guard’s helicopter air wing already stretched to the breaking point, grounding any fraction of the Coast Guard’s current fleet of around 48 Sikorsky-built MH-60T helicopters poses a serious problem for the Coast Guard.

With emergency conversations still ongoing between the Coast Guard and Sikorsky, the flight hour cut may prove to be a temporary safety “hold.” But, if the 19,000-hour service life is not quickly adjusted back upward, returning to the original 20,000-hour target, the Coast Guard risks running out of operable MH-60T airframes at a time when the Service needs them most.
With an aging, bare-bones air wing, the Coast Guard has few options. By late 2023, over 90 percent of the Coast Guard’s fleet of MH-60T helicopters were operating with over 16,000 flight hours. Each Jayhawk chalks up somewhere around 800 flight hours a year—and with the remaining still-flyable airframes expected to operate more, filling in for the already-grounded helicopters—the Coast Guard’s high-hour MH-60T fleet will deplete itself in a big hurry. The Coast Guard’s only other helicopter, the aging and far smaller MH-65 Dolphin, is getting phased out, so there’s no backup for the beleaguered Service.

To recover, the Coast Guard may be forced to adjust their long-planned, penny-pinching effort to rebuild their existing high-hour MH-60T aircraft.

As a chronically underfunded agency, the Coast Guard has, for years, touted a low-cost plan to run their MH-60T aircraft for 20,000 hours, gradually rebuilding each high-hour MH-60T helicopter, enabling the aircraft to run for thousands of additional hours. But now, with the surprise cut in service life, the Coast Guard’s convoluted and penny-pinching Jayhawk recapitalization effort—a necessity to keep from busting the Coast Guard’s miniscule $13.8 billion budget—may be broken as well.
https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-...jpg&width=1440The Coast Guard needs robust all-weather helicopters
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Hard-Used Fleet Shows Signs Of Strain:

The Coast Guard’s MH-60T helicopter fleet sees intensive use, and they are very reliable. However, over the past few years, the Coast Guard’s normally robust MH-60Ts have been showing signs of operational strain. In November 2023, a MH-60T crashed in Alaska while responding to a distress call from a fishing boat. Seven months later, in June, a different Coast Guard MH-60T helicopter suffered transmission issues and was forced to make an emergency landing West of Orlando, Florida.

While there is no indication that the abrupt service life cut is linked to the recent MH-60T mishaps, the surprise service life reduction is a sign that the Coast Guard, in their effort to save cash, is pushing their MH-60Ts to the brink. As Sikorsky’s long-held engineering models get tested by the Coast Guard’s unprecedented operational flight hour expectations, the helicopters can encounter new risks and experience otherwise unprecedented failures. The abrupt grounding may be an indication that something in the older, hard-run aircraft is threatening to break.

Put bluntly, funding constraints are pushing both the Coast Guard and Sikorsky into uncharted territory. Better-funded government agencies replace their H-60 helicopters far more often. The Navy, in 2003, celebrated extending the service lives of their H-60-based Seahawk fleet to 12,000 flight hours, up from 10,000. And, today, the Coast Guard, to save costs, is taking those Navy cast-offs and rebuilding them as MH-60Ts, fully expecting to run them for at least 8,000 more hours.

That plan may no longer work. Permanently reducing the MH-60T service life by 1,000 hours upends the Coast Guard’s delicately-balanced fiscal calculus, and may force the Coast Guard to buy new MH-60T hulls (a newly-manufactured “nose, cabin and aft transition structure”) from Sikorsky.

Even that step might not work, as the Coast Guard is also balancing industrial base constraints. Again, to save cost, high-hour Coast Guard MH-60Ts are being rebuilt around “fresh” hulls at the Coast Guard’s Aviation Logistics Center (ALC) in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The aging facility—a former seaplane base—can only refit so many helicopters at a time and has very little capacity to accelerate the complex rebuilding efforts. With delays in the refit effort likely, Coast Guard leaders probably counted on Sikorsky to grant waivers, allowing the Coast Guard to operate the hard-used choppers beyond the already high 20,000 hour limit.

Of course, there’s an open question as to why the Coast Guard is going through such lengths to keep their aging helicopters in the air at all.

There’s no plan. The Coast Guard’s long-term rotary wing recapitalization effort is in complete disarray. Once pegged to the Army’s Future Vertical Lift Program, the Coast Guard was caught flat-footed after the Army picked the Bell V-280 Valor. That complex tilt-rotor platform is unlikely to meet the Coast Guard’s demanding rotary wing requirements, and, outside of new MH-60Ts, the Coast Guard has few viable options for the future.

With Polar Operations, hurricane response and other rotary-wing intensive tasks looming, it may well be time for Congress to read both the Administration and the Coast Guard the riot act, forcing the Department of Homeland Security to order enough newly-built MH-60T Jayhawks to fully refresh the Coast Guard’s stressed rotary wing force. The Coast Guard’s helicopters are vital, life-saving tools, and, rather than love them to death, it may be time to buy the penurious Service a new fleet of Jayhawk helicopters before the Blackhawk production line closes for good.

What is the nature of the problem, fatigue, corrosion, both?

Maybe hold off the MH-65 retirement OR ask for SRT /MRR replacement tender to OEMS?

cheers

I didn't understand the article using the term "penny-pinching" about the USCG effort to rebuild their MH-60T fleet using new "hulls" from Sikorsky (the subject of an earlier thread).

If USCG is constrained to a small budget and has the skilled in-house workforce to progressively rebuild helicopters at a lower cost, then what is wrong with that?

Having said that, I would have expected all drivetrain components to have much shorter service life than the airframe, so it really seems like the only saving USCG can make is using its own workforce to assemble the helicopters rather than paying Sikorsky for supplying complete machines.

As i understand it the MH-65 retirement has been brought forwards because they can't get support from Airbus - gearboxes in particular, so extending its service is unlikely to be an option.

there is no way rebuild is cheaper than buying new off the line.

Rather than tack a finite service life number to the Fleet....why not stick to an "On Condition" life limit that is determined by the actual condition of the aircraft?

Commerical Operators do that....I have flown some Bell 212's that were approaching 40,000 hours on the airframe.

I have a Clock from the last one flew to the disposal yard....which had 37,000 hours on it and had the Operator maintained its standard of maintenance rather than start cutting the budget in the last five years that aircraft could probably still be flying as some of those disposed of wound up rebuilt and went to work in Utility and Fire Fighting in the US and Canada.

One can look to Columbia Helicopters and others that operate high time machines for examples of what can be done absent politics and bureaucratic thinking.

One has to stop and think clearly for a moment about the bigger picture....at some point every aircraft reaches a point where it must be retired and replacements must be found.

There is nothing "wrong" with the JayHawk as the Coast Guard has proven due to its excellent service record. It is fit for task and that task has not changed much over the life of the Fleet.

The problem is there are too few of them and a reasoned plan to replace that capability. has not taken place.

The problem is a Federal Government that cannot set the right priorities on its spending. There is ample money in the budget to take care of this problem but it is being spent on "political programs" rather than programs all because of misallocated funding to useless programs.

The Coast Guard should be applauded for its "Can Do!" approach to how it conducts business and should be funded at a level that allows for them to accomplish their mission which among other things is actually saving lives.

I have seen two such night time SAR efforts do just that within sight of my home...both involving a JayHawk from Elizabeth City with one of them having been done in very poor weather.

Just two of the grossly failed programs of the current administration and Congress diverted One Billion Dollars from needed spending such as the USCG's helicopter fleet needs.

Not trying to turn this into a political debate but at least we should note and accept that the USCG gets short changed in its funding and at least put the funding short fall into perspective of how minor it is in the grand scheme of Federal Spending but so significant in its harm to the USCG ability to complete its mission.

The Coast Guard Elizabeth City operation is a bright spot in government operations and deserves respect for how they go about their business there.

We have a similar operation just south of them at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station which also does good work in support of the US Navy and Marine Corps.

Put me on record as supporting, recognizing, and appreciating "Penny Pinching" in Government Spending....something that does not to seem to be the normal way of government spending tax money.

I still remember the Four Hundred Dollar Hammers and the Eight Hundred Dollar Toilet Seats from years ago when Fraud, Waste, and Abuse became popular issues.

The US Navy started a program called "Buy Our Spares Smart (BOSS)" that saved Millions of Dollars.

Lone might recall those initiatives from his early years as a Nugget.

Agree SAS. When the rest of us are closing the hangar doors due to weather, the Coasties are opening theirs to fly out and save folks.
Should have added: Maybe it’s no wonder their funding isn’t where it should be: they now work under the Sec’y of Homeland Security Majorkas. There’s the answer.

If I may comment on the article...
While I don't think that the Blackhawk line is shutting down any time soon, I agree that getting some "China Copy" T's or a slight upgrade to the T would be a good idea.
Going back a few decades: when the Navy decided to "re manufacture" the B's and F's into the R's, it all went pear shaped in the end. (Which is its own sordid little story). The Navy ended up buying new birds after a number of years of trying to get things like Lot 0 aircraft to fit into Lot 13 Jigs ... etc.
Not sure if that's what is happening to these T's, but it may be a factor in fatigue life being recalculated.

I tend to agree, but it is a whole different budget approval process. It's why we saw the UH-1Y and W 'upgrades' (as far as I know). Also, why the RAF spent hundreds of millions on the AS330 Puma HC2 upgrade, rather than buying 725s.

The GAO report from April 24 shine a light on all of this.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-106374-highlights.pdf

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-106374.pdf