Good news from Boeing and the MoD this week. The Boeing UK Rotorcraft Support team has begun flight testing the first Chinook Mk4 helicopter for the Royal Air Force (RAF). Project Julius is the MoD’s name for the effort to modernize the current Royal Air Force Chinook fleet
Project JULIUS will modify 38 Mk2/2A Chinooks into the Mk4/4A configuration and eight Mk3 Chinook’s into the Mk5 configuration.
The Mk3 aircraft are of course the world’s most expensive helicopters due to the MoD’s cost saving methods.
A major part of the modification for both the Mk4/4A and Mk5 aircraft is the Thales TopDeck cockpit which will provide improved situational awareness, increased safety and options for capability enhancement. The Thales UK’s TopDeck cockpit suite includes an onboard mission planning system providing crew with extensive tactical flexibility and the capability to optimize the mission profile to suit real-time circumstances. A ground mission support system completes the tactical mission capability and a fully secure data transfer system guarantees security. Critical flight data, including primary flight and tactical data, is continuously presented on the four main 6″ x 8″ displays, easing cockpit workload and allowing a significant increase in situational awareness.
The first of the upgraded aircraft will be available for operations towards the end of this year
The entire Mk2 fleet will be fitted with the JULIUS cockpit by early 2015, followed by Mk2A and Mk3 modifications by 2015 and 2016, respectively.
The modifications also include the addition of a third crew-member seat, upgrades to the Honeywell T55-714 engines and an update of Airworthiness & Safety Certification and Qualification for the modernized Chinook. Tablet computer ‘electronic flight bags’ will also be provided as part of the project.
The existing engines are being replaced with Honeywell T55 L714A engines, although a couple of RAF Chinooks do use this engine. The engine upgrade improves power by approximately 20%, increases fuel efficiency and reduces maintenance requirements. The net result will be improved performance and greater availability.
The aircraft are being modified at the Gosport Fleetlands facility operated by Vector Aerospace, Boeing’s principal subcontractor for deep support of the RAF Chinook fleet.
This programme will still see a fleet within a fleet but the commonality benefits will be significant, ruthless commonality in action, especially for maintenance and training.
The project was announced in 2009 at a cost of £408 million, the engine element cost £128m and the avionics the balance although work first started on the project definition in 2008.
GOOD NEWS
UK’s Chinooks were the first to get a radar warning system – nicked from the Vulcans
- do they still have it?
Expect the announcment very shortly that due to the upgrade to the chinooks , there will be no need for the 22 or is it 12 ordered previously, ive just got a very nasty feeling about this ,its getting worse everyday . Have the germans got any we can borrow ?
@Ming
“Have the germans got any we can borrow”
???
The germans are not capable of providing enough helos for A-stan, they normally use US-provided helos. And personally, I expect the to-be-introduced NH-90 to prove quite desastrous in ops.
@McZ
Don’t the Germans have the CH53 in Afghanistan? presume the lack of numbers is driven by self defence kits and availability issues.
also re Chinnok I did read somewhere that there is a contract negotiation for 14 – which would be the 12 (now thought affordable under SDR) and 2 as replacments for losses in Afghanistan (and presumably funded by the Tresury)
Now I start to understand the sudden turn-about with Pumas – both Chinooks and RN Merlins being under modernisation, which taxes the available numbers for a couple of years
While I agree it is positive that the project appears to be moving forward and that, furthermore, it is a step in the right direction in terms of commonality across the fleet, I’d raise a couple of points of concern / caution -
1. As Admin notes, there are still going to be “fleets within fleets”, surely there was at least the opportunity to develop an absolutely standard “RAF” Chinook here
2. Build on point 1/ surely the really opportunity here was to standardise on the US Army standard CH-47F, using the same upgrade line in the States? Can someone explain to me why we are going for our upgrade and not buying identical upgrades to the US?
3. Building on 2/ if (a big if) the 12-14 new-build chinooks emerge, surely they are going to be CH-47Fs. In which case are we going to see another “type” in RAF service?
4. Finally, a note about the Pumas – retaining this upgrade programme and the aircraft themselves, is surely insane? Does anyone know the thinking behind this? Surely even limited additions to the Chinook and Merlin fleets would be much preferable from a commonality and cost point of view?
Totally lost now does anyone know what version the new 12/14 ‘on order’ will be?
And the phrase “options for capability enhancement” is this another way of saying fitted for but not with?
RE: Puma’s
In an interview last year, published Air Monthly Limited, the original plan called for 8 (on top of the 22 originally promised) more Chinook’s to replace the Puma’s in 2024ish, plus small number of medium helicopters for special forces operations in urban environments where the Merlin was to large. Reading between the lines it seemed they could get the Puma’s back in service faster than new Chinook’s could come on line, but once we had enough Chinook’s we could afford to get rid of the Puma’s.
Still parts of me hopes that the MoD wins the Euro Millions Lottery and instead of converting Merlin’s to replace Sea King’s and life extending Puma’s they instead order 40 odd new Merlin’s, of course I would also like to see them forgot the idea of SAR-H and bring in buy 20 odd Merlin in SAR configuration as well.
JimSW: “Totally lost now does anyone know what version the new 12/14 ‘on order’ will be?”
They will be new build “British Configuration” Chinooks, i.e. new HC5′s (HC6 ?) – they will NOT be CH47F !
The NETHERLANDS have today taken delivery of the 1st of 6 new CH47f taking them up to 16 , we can defo skank some of theirs or rent them weve plenty of skunk kicking about .
So in conclusion, under an absolute “best case” we’ll probably end up with a support helo force of -
1. 58-60 Chinooks of 4 similar, but still different, Marks (none of which are the same as the US Army’s current standard and so can’t reap the full benefits of commonality)
2. 28 Merlins of 2 different Marks
3. 35 Pumas of an unknown Mark
Which would be spread across 3 different bases – Culdrose (I’m assuming this is where the Merlins will end up), Benson, Odiham.
It is of course worrying that this would clearly have to be chalked up as a relative success for the MOD / Forces, in terms of both procurement and fleet rationalisation…..
http://www.key.aero/view_news.asp?ID=2928
“Canadian news agency CTV News says that the country’s National Defence is to sell five CH-147D Chinook helicopters after their mission in Afghanistan is complete later this year.”
I wonder if this is the reason for recent noises about cancelling “our” order for 12 – perhaps the idea is to replace 5 (or realistically, say 8?) of the new-builds with third-hand Canadian ones and/or perhaps some US Army ones from somewhere? Yes they’ve got a few miles on the clock in testing conditions, and it’s not clear how long the US Army had had them before the Canucks bought them, but if they can survive until 2015 before being junked then they’d probably suit us pretty well.
@Nigel – I wouldn’t get too hung up on the commonality thing. a) we get some industrial benefits (ie incoming taxes) to offset the costs and b) there’s a lot more TopDeck sets in operation than there are US Chinooks, it’s a standard Thales family of avionics that is used in civvy helicopters and even biz jets. Commonality with the US Army isn’t the be-all and end-all – hey, we even had one in common with the Argentine air force for a while, one of the few useful bits of booty from the Falklands…. And given where we’re starting from, it’s certainly cheaper to have four more-or-less similar Marks of Chinook with minor logistical differences than spend heaps of money upgrading them just so that they all get the same designation for tidiness.