NHIndustries NH90

there's an update on Belgium's NH90-TTH woes.
it appears that the MoD has made a U-turn in its plans to withdraw the type.
originally it was planned to withdraw the NH90 by April 2024, however, there have been discussions with industry to keep the 4 TTH-version in service for a little while longer. however, this decision has no influence on the LUH (Airbus H145M) aquasition program, that will now replace the remaining Agusta A109BAi's, a deal for 20 is expected to be signed later this year (15 for the Air Force, and 5 for the Federal Police air support unit (RAGO)).

https://www-rtl-be.translate.goog/a...l=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp
 
Any thoughts if Belgium will get on the "NATOhawk" train? Or will they go with EC725 Caracal?

This must be infuriating at the Eurocopter HQ.
 
yasotay said:
Any thoughts if Belgium will get on the "NATOhawk" train? Or will they go with EC725 Caracal?

This must be infuriating at the Eurocopter HQ.
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there are no plans to aquire new medium-lift helicopters, with the exception of 4 7-tonne class helicopters next year for SAR work.
but there are plans to aquire a fleet of 8 to 10 heavylift helicopters by the end of the decade, and the CH-47F Chinook has been touted as the favorite, athough this plan could be altered, because the whole "made in EU" mindset, but there is no European heavylift helicopter, they have no other alternative (and i think the CH-53K is too expensive and overkill for Belgium)
 
Well, I guess that's what Airbus call a compostable helicopter built with bio degradable material.
 
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That has come as no surprise that the Taipan has been retired early. I think that Australia has made the right decision to get rid of the MRH-90 and concentrate on getting the UH-60M Black Hawk into service.
 
perttime said:
Finland has 20. Deliveries were seriously late. Nine of the helicopters were still delivered in a stripped down configuration and upgraded later on. Apparently, over 50% are now operational at any given time. From 2008 to 2015, more than 50% were under maintenance, repair, or upgrading. Some media have reported that a flight hour in a NH90 costs €6000 more than an hour in an F/A-18 C/D.
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What in the (expletives deleted)?!??


Stovepipe said:
What that means is that they did not build enough spare stock of the most expensive parts such as flight computers, gearboxes, engines and engine spares, rotors and rotor head spares so that the world fleet had to beg and borrow from each other. Given that Airbus have been operating pooled parts systems for decades with the Airbus airliners, this should not have happened. It's so basic, so important to get right from Day one.
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Seriously.


riggerrob said:
Airliners as young as 8 years old are being broken up to supply spare parts for their brothers and sisters.
Short production runs and too few spares being built are the problems.
Once a production line shuts down, the dollar value of rare spares can go through the roof!!!!!!
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You would not believe the cheers of joy when an audit of the Boeing warehouse revealed a 727 upper fuselage skin that wasn't in the inventory database... I heard it clear on the other end of the airfield!



Stovepipe said:
appalling standards. You wouldnt tolerate it with a car, or a tank or a naval ship, why should you tolerate it with a helicopter?
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Point of order, naval ships run around 33% availability.


H_K said:
NH90 story is confusing… other small users like the RNZAF are flying the pants off their NH90s and seem very happy.

https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/media-centr...ing-effort-during-cyclone-gabrielle-response/
For the record the RNZAF fleet flies 3x more hours than the Norwegians, with only 8 helicopters vs. 14 (!)… 40% fewer airframes.

Their maintenance is also impressively lean - 60 technicians at squadron level to support 8 helos flying 200+ hours a year. And only 13 people for second line support (600 hour checks). No idea why New Zealand seems to have mastered the NH90 (coming from the UH-1 no less… a very old bird).
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It may be because they're used to old birds that needed a lot of maintenance, so NZ bought as many spares as they were using for the Hueys.
 
Scott Kenny said:
What in the (expletives deleted)?!??



Seriously.



You would not believe the cheers of joy when an audit of the Boeing warehouse revealed a 727 upper fuselage skin that wasn't in the inventory database... I heard it clear on the other end of the airfield!




Point of order, naval ships run around 33% availability.



It may be because they're used to old birds that needed a lot of maintenance, so NZ bought as many spares as they were using for the Hueys.
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New Zealand hasnt got a huge manpower base to begin with, so id imagine their current manpower are running to stand still and all the fat has been wrung out of the system. couple of personnel go sick or go on courses and things will run down. Airlines and leasing companies pay more and there are fewer heli mechs to start with.
 
Stovepipe said:
New Zealand hasnt got a huge manpower base to begin with, so id imagine their current manpower are running to stand still and all the fat has been wrung out of the system. couple of personnel go sick or go on courses and things will run down. Airlines and leasing companies pay more and there are fewer heli mechs to start with.
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Heli mechanics love helis, though.

The trick is to get more people into helos at their schools or at the start of their careers, to trigger that love.

If NZ is really run so tight that they can't afford to send a couple of people to schools or whatever, they need to grab enough bodies that they can send people to school.
 
TomS said:
It's not so much that the airframes are being buried for safety, it's that the Australian defense establishment wants to bury the story and this is the easiest way they could think of to do it. It means the airframes won't be sitting around somewhere that people can keep taking pictures of them.
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I don’t think they were trying to hide them as much as to make sure that no one could ever use the airframes again. They wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having another operator show that these helicopters were perfectly flyable.
 
Well - they also buried the F-111s. No idea about the whys of that Australian quirk of burying flying machines...
 
those burial site will one day dig up by archaeologist
question is: Future Humans or descendant of Cats ?
 
H_K said:
I don’t think they were trying to hide them as much as to make sure that no one could ever use the airframes again. They wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having another operator show that these helicopters were perfectly flyable.
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You are absolutely incredible. With so much users throwing to the bin their NH-90 (and loosing temporarily the expected capacity at a time of great stress on defense), including plenty of European services, you are still pushing for this weird narrative.


OK, let's step back and try to use our brains.
1st: what are they burrying: airframe only (all system removed)
2ndly: what's specifics with these airframe? They are all CFRP
3rdly: what are the alternatives to burrying: store them under the sun or inside a hangar
4th: what are the specifics of Australia remote storage sites: often in desert area with high temperatures
5th: CFRP airframe fires are hard to estinghish and generate a lot of hazardous chemicals. Would require a lot of on-site personnels.


So what would be the rational outcome of such combinations: store the NH airframe inside a regulated temperature hangar (costly) or dig a hole and burry them deep that there is no hazard of fire.

Was it that hard?

Edit:
Alternatively, giant spiders migration and countering Cats & Koala world domination would be also a valid alternative argument.

Notice also that I haven't read yet any French man pointing the finger... AUKUS. But, probably...
 
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AUS made no real effort to sell the airframes.

Only a few weeks between the decision to permanently ground the fleet and the start of disposal activities. Ukraine would have taken them, others maybe… but that would have required allowing time for a legit sales effort (several months if not over a year). And then the embarrassment of seeing those helicopters fly again… which clearly the Australian government didn’t want.

I’m not a particular fan of NH90 - I can totally understand why operators prefer to avoid the maintenance headaches and buy Blackhawks or Super Pumas instead. NH90 does do the job though, at least in recent years once most of the early issues were ironed out. It isn’t perfect but I think some operators went out of their way to blame the early product issues for some of their own failures - Australia and Norway in particular made some very dumb decisions which hurt their NH90 fleets.
 
If you had read the reports, you would have noticed that they have offered some to NZ.
So much for the ambarrassement theory.
 
Even more criminal, the Aussies' buried their F-111s'.

Burying decommissioned equipment is not new. Heck think its been done for a couple thousand years.
 
Did not know about the Australian F-111s being buried yasotay. I thought that at least one of them would have gone to a museum.
 
H_K said:
AUS made no real effort to sell the airframes.

Only a few weeks between the decision to permanently ground the fleet and the start of disposal activities. Ukraine would have taken them, others maybe… but that would have required allowing time for a legit sales effort (several months if not over a year). And then the embarrassment of seeing those helicopters fly again… which clearly the Australian government didn’t want.

I’m not a particular fan of NH90 - I can totally understand why operators prefer to avoid the maintenance headaches and buy Blackhawks or Super Pumas instead. NH90 does do the job though, at least in recent years once most of the early issues were ironed out. It isn’t perfect but I think some operators went out of their way to blame the early product issues for some of their own failures - Australia and Norway in particular made some very dumb decisions which hurt their NH90 fleets.
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There is a lot not being reported or downright lies being reported about this sorry saga. Some of those lies are coming from the minister, most probably due to them being fed to him by certain senior members of Army Aviation wanting anything to do with the MRH90 well and truly buried. Unfortunately the information I have is not something I am at liberty to publish...though some well targeted FOI requests might get it.

I had a bit to do with the MRH90 entering service but can assure you that I am no fan of Airbus here. The history of the MRH90 in service is a sorry one with plenty of failures to perform...on both industry and Defence sides. That all said, the decisions being undertaken now to deprive the Ukrainians of them and to use inaccurate excuses and reporting is criminal.
 
TomcatViP said:
And to utterly debunk the embarrassment allegations raised above by user @H_K :

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/airbus-negotiates-with-australia-for-mrh90-parts
Let's be honest, what best than sell bulk airframe to make money? Sell them in pieces.

It will be interesting to look after the total value of these sales for undeclared Airbus compensations.
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That and the major complaint about the NH90 is the lack of spare parts for most users.

NZ is the exception, but I suspect that they just ordered the same number of spares as if the helicopter was a 60yo Huey with Vietnam combat damage.
 
It certainly looked like all of the usable parts had been stripped prior to them being buried.
 
They would perhaps have made interesting garden sheds......
 

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