US Army UH-72A trainer replacement?

Cost per hour for the UH-72 is about as cheap as it gets without resorting to something like Robinsons. My guess is they are trying to find a way to get a contractor to provide both helicopters and training and imaging that this will somehow be cheaper. I doubt it.
 
It does seem to be a bit excessive as an initial trainer, 1400shp and 3.5 tonnes.
 
The UH-72 in the US Army training fleet are the most utilized helicopters in the fleet. They fly daily and the maintenance cost is increasing. Given the time it takes to go through the bureaucracy of acquiring a new platform, they have to ask for information now.
There is also the politics to contend with. If you dump ~ 200 used UH-72 on the market, Airbus won't sell as many in the market. Their production plant in Mississippi reduces work or is shuttered, etc.
I agree with TomS as to the two likely contenders but would add the likelihood that Airbus will throw in with remanufacturing or new UH-72 as an option. Bell is certainly aggressively pushing the 505.
 
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The UH-72 got the job to start with due to it being a twin-engined aircraft.
Since nearly all US Army helos are twin-engined the Army wanted a twin-engined trainer.

So I question if any single-engined offering would be chosen as its replacement.
 
If the proposed helicopter is cheaper to operate than the UH-72, it is competitive.
 
BlackBat242 said:
The UH-72 got the job to start with due to it being a twin-engined aircraft.
Since nearly all US Army helos are twin-engined the Army wanted a twin-engined trainer.

So I question if any single-engined offering would be chosen as its replacement.
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The Army also tends to stick to its talking track right up until a major change is made. So if their thought process has evolved to seek a cheaper model, I’d expect that you’ll see an RFP come out for a single - but I wouldn’t rule non-Twins out based on their stated logic from past years.

FARA was the Army’s “#1 modernization priority” in interviews and press releases right up until they cancelled it.
 
Army leadership has made it abundantly clear it cannot afford two new start helicopters. If it becomes urgent, then I think it will be more than a request for information, but not until then, just a market survey.
 
yasotay said:
Army leadership has made it abundantly clear it cannot afford two new start helicopters. If it becomes urgent, then I think it will be more than a request for information, but not until then, just a market survey.
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I don't think they're contemplating a full acquisition program, this looks more like they're trying to open the door to contractors who would bid on a new IERW contract with their own aircraft rather than Lakotas. Even if someone wins with a (Contractor-owned) Helicopter X bid and IERW training moves to those, the UH-72s would probably stay in inventory for the Guard or at least as spares for the time being.
 
Airbus is challenging claims that its UH-72A Lakota helicopter is ill-suited for its current role as the US Army’s primary pilot-training aircraft.

Senior army leaders have pointedly criticised the H145-based twin-engined rotorcraft as too complex and featuring too much automation to effectively impart basic flight skills.

The army has also linked an increase in serious rotary-wing accidents to adopting the UH-72A as its primary trainer in 2020.

Airbus’s competitors have cited those talking points as they seek to promote alternatives to the UH-72A for the army’s Flight School Next contract. That programme seeks to reform the army’s entire flight training curriculum, complete with a new fleet of “contractor-owned/contractor-operated” (COCO) aircraft to replace Lakotas.

[...]

Top army generals, including the service’s chief of aviation, have said pilot trainees are not learning basic “stick-and-rudder” flying skills in Lakotas, leading them to make potentially fatal mistakes when they begin flying the larger, more-powerful frontline models like Boeing AH-64E attack helicopters.

“A lot of what I’m hearing is: they’re great system operators, but they don’t know how to fly the aircraft,” Major General Clair Gill, the army’s top aviation officer, told FlightGlobal in May.

[...]

Revenue from Flight School Next is estimated to be around $1.5 billion annually.
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https://www.flightglobal.com/helico...-ill-suited-for-pilot-training/164120.article
This is a fundamental problem in aviation training present all across the spectrum, from Private to Military. I first addressed this problem 10 year ago online.*
With education, at every level of it, basic stuffs are very important. Ex. again here with the USAF allocating their A-29 for spin recovery training:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh3TqccprZg

*Today, some of it are openly discussed across the industry without being no more SciFi, like in-flight failure oriented training, single pilot cockpit on airliners, full automation capabilities etc..
 
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Makes sense that heavily automated trainer helicopters leads to a lack of basic skills.

I'd want to bounce this off of the insurance actuaries, but I suspect that a few years after the introduction of a new set of driver safety aids, the accident rate goes up.

New drivers today seem to really lack a lot of the skills that were mandatory when I was learning to drive 30 years ago.
 
Scott Kenny said:
New drivers today seem to really lack a lot of the skills that were mandatory when I was learning to drive 30 years ago.
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30 years ago most people did not have cell phones, nor cars that did a lot of the driving for you. High tech distraction from fundamentals does seem to be a culprit.

Airbus also would not appreciate ~100 slightly used UH-72 for cheap going on the market.
 
The problem with "Wah, not enough stick skills, the kids nowadays only know how to push buttons!" is that it then takes us back to the preceding generation of accidents: "Duh, why'd it do that?" All too often you read accident descriptions where it's clear the problem isn't the automation, but the crew's ability to understand the automation.

Pilots need both skill-sets, and you can't teach running advanced automation in a steam-powered, dial-and-gauge aircraft.
 
Yes but automation needs an absurd amount of time to be mastered (and sometime, that on purpose (commercial))... When ever.

And remember that critical moments also happen at the apex of avionics expected behavior. In that second, what often save lives is the pilot instinct to rely on fundamentals of physics and stick time.
 
There are plenty of accidents these days that occurred because the aircrew was trying to figure out which button to push when it was a mechanical error (loss of tail rotor thrust) with no button to push. That said clearly knowing how to operate your aircraft and its systems remains critical to qualification.

I would add that those calling for this reversion to simple initial training are not 20th Century steam gage leather helmet aviators. Indeed most of them until recently were operating the most advanced helicopters with the most advanced mission equipment on the planet.
 
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TomcatViP said:
Yes but automation needs an absurd amount of time to be mastered (and sometime, that on purpose (commercial))... When ever.

And remember that critical moments also happen at the apex of avionics expected behavior. In that second, what often save lives is the pilot instinct to rely on fundamentals of physics and stick time.
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Is there really a great deal of difference in automation between an AW-119 and an EC-145? The 119 is hardly wire and string, it flies with autotrim by default.

The UH-72 was never a sensible choice for an ab initio helicopter trainer, it's far too big and powerful and expensive to run. But if pilots are failing to understand the position of their aircraft in relation to the ground, that doesn't sound like an automation problem.
 
Airbus should remind them that the surrounding public will invariably notice... The traditionally architectured Robinson are noisy helicopters, in my opinion louder than the Lakota (which is noisy as hell already but couldn't find any hard value).
 
And Robinson it seems:

The announcement did not say what aircraft M1 would provide, but an M1 spokesperson told Breaking Defense the company planned to use the R-66 made by Robinson Helicopter. A spokesperson for Robinson, which was a subcontractor to M1 for the competition, declined to comment for this report. A spokesperson for Fort Rucker, where helo training takes place, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
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https://breakingdefense.com/2026/08/army-picks-m1-to-lead-flight-school-next-pilot-training-program/
 
I know it's not yet certified, but could the AW09 be an option ?

As a side note since it’s still a paper product, Guimbal is targeting the French Army’s future H120 trainer replacement programme with its future Cabri G5.
 
The fun will begin once the lawyers sit down to argue through what the contract really means versus what the government and vendor thought it meant.
 
I get the idea behind this and agree in part, but my concern is maybe this goes the other way into being a bit too simple? Going right from the R66 to the AH-64E or UH-60M seems quite a jump, would they still do some training on the UH-72A?
 
Colonial-Marine said:
I get the idea behind this and agree in part, but my concern is maybe this goes the other way into being a bit too simple? Going right from the R66 to the AH-64E or UH-60M seems quite a jump, would they still do some training on the UH-72A?
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I'd sure hope so.

Initial rotor training on the R66 just like how USAF starts them in Cessna 172s. Pass the initial training of "can your dumb self actually fly 10k parts loosely organized around an oil leak" and you step up to twin turbine power for the bigger pieces.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'd sure hope so.

Initial rotor training on the R66 just like how USAF starts them in Cessna 172s. Pass the initial training of "can your dumb self actually fly 10k parts loosely organized around an oil leak" and you step up to twin turbine power for the bigger pieces.
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Thanks. I spit my morning Sam's Cola all over my tablet, pajamas and recliner.
 
Titus said:
Thanks. I spit my morning Sam's Cola all over my tablet, pajamas and recliner.
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Sorry, I can't be responsible for you taking a drink while reading my posts. If you haven't learned I deploy military-grade weaponized sarcasm by now... ;)
 
yasotay said:
The UH-72 in the US Army training fleet are the most utilized helicopters in the fleet. They fly daily and the maintenance cost is increasing. Given the time it takes to go through the bureaucracy of acquiring a new platform, they have to ask for information now.
There is also the politics to contend with. If you dump ~ 200 used UH-72 on the market, Airbus won't sell as many in the market. Their production plant in Mississippi reduces work or is shuttered, etc.
I agree with TomS as to the two likely contenders but would add the likelihood that Airbus will throw in with remanufacturing or new UH-72 as an option. Bell is certainly aggressively pushing the 505.
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Interesting perspective.
That explains why the RCAF cheerfully spends many millions of dollars per year on overhauls, but is hesitant to buy new airframes.
Harbour Air and Kenmore also repeatedly overhaul their float-equipped DHC-2 Beavers and DHC-3 single-engined Otters, but that is because deHavilland of Canada quit building them many decades ago. The only competitors in production are Cessna's 208 Caravan and Quest's Kodiak.

"Dumping 200 used UH-72 on the market ...."
Military-surplus airframes dumped on the market can ruin factories. Take the example of all the US Army surplus radial-engined Beavers dumped on the market during the 1960s. A bush-pilot could buy three surplus Beavers for the cost of a single Turbo-Beaver. Even if he could only assemble a pair of piston Beavers from the pile of parts, he was still ahead.
Meanwhile, deHavilland of Canada only sold small numbers of expensive Turbo-Beavers and soon quit building single-engined bush-planes. I suspect that half of the Turbo-Beavers flying today are conversions (Kenmore, Harbour Air, Sea Land, Wipline, etc.) are conversions of worn-out piston Beavers.
More mature military generals recognize the value of keeping factories in business, so try to spread the wealth. Sometimes they award production contracts with the aim of keeping a factory in business.
 
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Maintaining old airframes probably makes more sense for Canada. I make this assumption thinking that they have a smaller fleet and likely not the same operational tempo as the US. The Robinson, while likely not the preferred solution of the instructor pilots, is certainly a more economical platform given the number of hours that are likely to be put on them.
 
yasotay said:
The Robinson, while likely not the preferred solution of the instructor pilots, is certainly a more economical platform given the number of hours that are likely to be put on them.
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I think it makes sense for first phase of rotor instruction, figuring out if the pilot candidates actually have the multitasking ability to have their left hand do one thing, right hand do something else, and feet sorta working with left hand sorta working independently.

Same reason USAF starts their pilot candidates in Cessna 172s. The bare minimums of being able to fly, before turning them loose on much more expensive hardware.
 

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