Some helicopter porn, pictures of the recently deployed Merlins in Afghanistan (picture credit MoD)
A Royal Air Force Merlin Helicopter Over Afghanistan
RAF Merlin Helicopter Aircrewman in Afghanistan
RAF Merlin Helicopter Gunner over Afghanistan
RAF Merlin Helicopter Creates a 'Brownout' Dust Cloud Landing in Afghanistan
Merlin goes operational in Afghanistan
Merlin goes operational in Afghanistan
Taking off from a fob in Helmand
Landing at a FOB
Merlin on the deck at a FOB nera the Green Zone in Helmand
BCOY 1RW 2Mar10_008
Has anyone noticed that the side doors slide forwwards thus preventing the side machine guns from working if the side doors are slid fully open!!! Also these are HC3s not the HC3as obtained from the Danes. Forgive me if I am wrong here but that means they have not had the rotor-blade upgrade the the 3as had so what the hell have they been doing with them for 12months to bring them up to “Theatre” standard?????
Was it the airframes or the people that were the root of the gap between Iraq and Afghanistan?
I posed a question on the blog a while ago, would the Danes get their replacements before we got our conversions?
Admin the answer would be a mixture of both with a nice helping of money. The people needed a break to come home and enjoy some time off to keep in line with harmony rules as well as refresh skills. They also needed to train for the much higher altitude and how it affects the aircraft particularly handling, extensive training was also needed in the latest brown out landing procedures. The Aircraft needed to have Night Vision systems added and updated to the latest standards (Why this needed to be done is beyond me) rotors needed to be replaced with the latest BERP IV blades. Furthermore the aircraft needed the normal extensive maintenance work such as a deep overhaul and inspection which takes time. Of course this all costs money which is very scare within the departmental budgets if money was available the aircraft could have been ready in a much shorter period. Manpower could have been thrown at the problems and manufacturers could have been enticed with a carrot to get things done in a shorter time.
The one thing that I don’t understand is with 28 aircraft 6 should have been converted and ready to be send out while others were still deployed in Iraq or could even have been sent out before others came home. I would imagine they were not as many of the airframes would have been cannibalised all over and would be nowhere near a flying state. With additional funds I’m pretty sure crews and airframes could have been made ready and deployed to both theatres, Crewing would be the biggest problem but the number of crews could have been increased by training other helicopter crews on the Merlin.
Speaking as an Engineer who maintains these aircraft, they have needed much more than just new rotor blades. Deep maintenance after returning from Iraq, defensive upgrades, continuous testing to prove that all the new systems work, all this while returning from Iraq, being deployed to America and now Afghanistan all in the space of 4 months. So that is what we have been doing over the last 12 months!!
FE
No offence is ever intended
FE as you were probably refering to my comment I can confirm that no offence was intended. It is that from the outside and with only partial information, one is prone to making false assumptions. It has only just come to light that the HC3s were also getting the BERP IV blades. I think many were expecting the HC3a to have been deployed first as these were the first to have the updates. /from where we sit in our comfortable airchairs, everything seems to take for ever. Surely we could have deployed Merlin’s to Afghanistan sooner than we did???
FE – keep up the good work dude !
Anything you can tell us about the ‘stretch’ on the engineers caused by the return, the deep maint, the training deployment to the U.S. etc ??? Maintaining opsec of course… !
We blow a lot of hot air on here, it would be interesting to know from your perspective whether how additional money spent on more Merlin’s could support their users and their clients (the Army). Please comment further if you can.