FlyingInIreland Magazine

Letters to the Editor

Letters and questions to the editorial team are always very welcome. If we cannot answer your question, we will forward it on to somebody who may be able to help you. Due to editorial constraints it is not always possible to publish every letter in the magazine, but all letters will be published on this page. You can ask a question or send us some feedback using the "Contact Us" link on the left, or post a letter to PO Box 10004, Churchtown, Dublin 14, Ireland.

Dear Editor,

I thouroughly enjoyed Guy Warner The Irish Air Corps articile in the april edition.I was just wondering with the retirement of the Dauphins have we lost the capability to land helicopters on board the Le Ethine or are there plans to convert some of the Agusta Westlands 139s for this purpose or indeed are they capable for this task

Continued success with Flying in Ireland

Regards
Gerard Murphy

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"Have we lost the capability to land helicopters on board the Le Eithne" the short answer is 'yes' . In assessing whether the Aw139s could provide such capacity there are a number issues to be addressed in answering this question

. The suitability of the helicopter (AW139 v SA365)

. The suitability of platform (L.E. Eithne and future platforms such as the proposed EPV [Extended Patrol Vessel],

. The capability of the Air Corps,

. The Capability of the Naval Service.

First of all the AW139 is a much larger helicopter than its predecessor the SA365. It is longer 16.62 m (13.73 m), taller 4.98 m (4.05 m) and has a greater rotor size (13.80 m/11.9 m) and a higher maximum take off weight (13,227 lbs/9,500 lbs).

While is has a very comprehensive avionics kit allowing night time operations it does not have specific naval equipment such as harpoon deck landing system. The Eithne was designed to take the smaller helicopter and even so the SA365 was a tight fit in the hangar.

The Eithne is no longer used for this purpose and in fact some of the specialist equipment has been removed or has become outdated. The specification for the proposed EPV (Extended Patrol Vessel) which the Naval service plans to aquire includes the capacity for Helicopter in-flight Refuelling Facility. There is not a requirement for a helicopter to be embarked (i.e. no ship based equipment or facilities required). However the specifications calls for the ability to launch and recover a 10 metric tonne helicopter with the aft deck strengthened to permit this. The EPV is one of two types of vessels going through a tender process for the Naval Service at present The tender is for one EPV with an option on a second and two smaller Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV) with an option on a third. The vessels are to be delivered on a phased basis between 2010 and 2012 with the options to be exercised, at the discretion of the Department of Defence.

The next question is does the Air Corps have the ability to deploy to Naval vessels on a sustained basis. For the Dauphins, the Naval Service had a target of 300 hours per annum of operations from the Eithne but the Air Corps were never able to achieve more than 15% of this target. Even if the helicopter could be accommodated on the ship the question has to be asked if it is worthwhile to base a helicopter and crew on ship that would operate around 200 days at sea to provide 300 flying hours? While there was a lot of adverse comment about the Air Corps involvement, there were a number of real issues such as rotation of personnel on 19-day patrols, boredom, seasickness etc as well as trying to work up night flying capability on a new helicopter in a difficult environment. There was also the issue of a continuing drain of experienced staff that was an issue at the time of the introduction of the Dauphin.

Regarding the Naval Service, they have invested significant resources in training personnel to support the helicopter operations. Most of these skills are now lost and would require some investment to regain. Should the Naval Service have opted for a daylight only requirement, which could have been provided by the Alouette III as in the Belgian Navy? Probably yes as it would have provided most of their requirements and would have been an easier task for the Air Corps.

So to summarise. Perhaps you need to rephrase the question to 'Does the Naval service need an airborne reconnaissance capability and what is the best way to provide it'? The answer is yes but a lot of the long range requirements are provided by the CASA. Would committing an all weather night flying helicopter be a good use of that asset probably not. Would the use of a similar smaller helicopter such as EC-135 be a good compromise maybe. My solution and one, which the Naval Service seems to be interested in, is UAVs(Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). The new OPVs for example are required to have a flight deck for UAV ops only, deploying current naval UAV's with redundancy for medium size VTOL tactical UAV. This is probably a better solution than helicopters based on the fact that the Naval service requires unrestricted operations of all equipment in sea state 5. In addition the new Vessel must be capable of surviving in sea state 9 and wind force 12, which is hardly conducive to supporting a large helicopter in a confined space.

We hope that this clarifies some of the issues for you and other readers.

Flying in Ireland,
Military Research team.