Sea Kings in Afghanistan

[40below]

Happened across this rather cool gallery of Sea Kings on ops in Helmand this morning, and let the record show that I made no jokes about their primary close support capability being an awesome ability to drop on insurgents from any altitude without any warning. I did not go there.

http://helmandblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/picture-of-day-royal-navy-sea-kings-in.html

 

[Nfld Sapper]

Happened across this rather cool gallery of Sea Kings on ops in Helmand this morning, and let the record show that I made no jokes about their primary close support capability being an awesome ability to drop on insurgents from any altitude without any warning. I did not go there.

http://helmandblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/picture-of-day-royal-navy-sea-kings-in.html

You do realize that the Brits actually maintain thier fleet of Sea Kings vice ours........

 

[Occam]

Also, you do realize that the Sea Kings in the article you mention are Westland Sea Kings, not Sikorsky Sea Kings?  There's a considerable difference between them.

The Westlands are newer, and have been beefed up in many areas, as the article points out.

The fact that our Sikorsky CH-124 Sea Kings are still in the air is a testament to the outstanding techs who work on them.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Sure, the Sea King is an old airframe...yes its been around for a long time.

But...before people go on and on about it, maybe you want to go up to YAW for a few days and see how much time they are actually flying or take a boo at the FLYPRO.

They are old, they are still flying, and crews are still trg up on them and deploy with them. 

 

[SeanNewman]

Some of my duties over there saw me as a Liaison Officer working with 42 Commando of the Royal Marines and they would often use SeaKings for their airmobile ops (they also used Chinooks, this was 08-09 when they were the RC(S) Reserve).

I got to know their planners and ops staff quite well and asked them about their SeaKings to see if they were worried about things like reliability or anything of that nature, and they certainly didn't have the same hang ups about theirs as we do.  Something may have been lost in translation because they weren't really computing why I was asking.

I am a mere novice with aircraft so I took it no further, but I think what Occam said above may be the reason.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Some of my duties over there saw me as a Liaison Officer working with 42 Commando of the Royal Marines and they would often use SeaKings for their airmobile ops (they also used Chinooks, this was 08-09 when they were the RC(S) Reserve).

I got to know their planners and ops staff quite well and asked them about their SeaKings to see if they were worried about things like reliability or anything of that nature, and they certainly didn't have the same hang ups about theirs as we do.  Something may have been lost in translation because they weren't really computing why I was asking.

I am a mere novice with aircraft so I took it no further, but I think what Occam said above may be the reason.

I spent alot of time in Sea Kings flown by 845 RNAS Sqn etc and they were superb: Arctic or Mediterranean. They were also in tip top shape as is, no doubt, the version used by the President of the good ol' US of A.