Why are Black Hawks still used?

apparently the Australian government thinks the blackhawks are obsolete... according to the Air9000 documents I was just reading.

The documents explain the need to replace the hawks with Troop Lifting Helicopters.

Under the teaming agreement, the companies will offer the EH101 as the new additional troop-lift helicopter and for the eventual retirement of the Army Blackhawk fleet.

Sad sad day for blackhawk lovers in this country.

chris

Well it's not just the Blackhawks getting shot down - the Apaches are getting hit too.

Face it - you fire an SA-18 at a low flying Blackhawk and it's going down.
No time for flares or evasive action, just BOOM.

Is that before or after they get those F-35's?

FULCRUM,
by the way, the Penguin is your best avatar yet...
I love it!!!

I was under the impression that helicopters simply autorotated to the ground when power is lost.

I gather from "Blackhawk Down" that they are vulnerable in the tail area having their rear props blown off.

Surely they could put a cage like structure around the tail to deflect the fire?

Being vulnerable to grenade launchers at $100 each is an expensive way to lose some high tech machinery.

Maybe not being such "sitting ducks" as platfoms would help as well?

I read somewhee that they were making "tailless helicopters" now, I think.

well, most of the kamov series helicopters dont have a tail rotor.

man that second helicopter is the ugliest thing I have seen in a while..

What happens if the lose a rotor either top or bottom??

do they lose control?


Chris

Yeah, if one of the counter-rotating rotors got knocked out you would lose control. They use the two counter-rotating rotors to cancel the torque out that each rotor generates.

[Edited on 15-1-2004 by Carrion]

UH-60 Blackhawks are not bad helicopters at all, actually. I'm here in Iraq right now, in 2nd ACR, on camp mullskinner, and in the aviation squadron, and we we've gottem up 24 hours a day. I'm sure you all remember a couple years ago when they were all going down in training. That was dues to the avionics getting screwed up by electromagetic fields given off by large powerlines. That has been fixed, since then. Most of the ones we lose here are from enemy fire. And when they lose power they do auto rotate but it's more or less a free fall to the ground so survival is low. A large problem is the transmission is prone to shooting forward through the cabin when its hit and thatkills alot of people too. For the record i'm not a pilot or mechanic, just a medic, but i don have a lot of friends who fly them or work on them.

Thomas are you a Blackhawk jockey?...my brother flies a Kiowa Warrior...one of the bigwigs over at sikorsky is a customer of mine, he loves to Irk my brother with "I love my blackhawk" bumperstickers and the like....but actually the little,.. what was it a hughes or sikorsky?
thing they used in korea was the first to get nicknamed "chopper"...

signed,that argumentative fixed wing guy.

[Edited on 25-1-2004 by cyberpilot]

Not knowing any technical specifications on many helicopters, I must say that the Blackhawk is one of my favorite helicopters. Mostly on looks. There's something about the design that I just like a lot.