Australia’s new fleet of Black Hawk helicopters will not be available to help respond to bushfires or other natural disasters over summer, but the army insists its helicopter program is back on track after the early retirement of the Taipan MRH-90 helicopter fleet.
The Taipans were permanently grounded last September, over a year ahead of schedule, following a fatal training accident in Queensland that caused the death of four army service members in the country’s worst peacetime military accident in almost 20 years.
The helicopters attracted further controversy when they were dismantled and disposed of rather than provided to Ukraine as requested by the war-ravaged country’s military.
Commandos during a training operation with the new Black Hawk helicopter at Holsworthy army base in Sydney.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The army welcomed reporters to Holsworthy Barracks in Sydney on Tuesday to show how the Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters are being used in counter-terrorism exercises, including in hostage-rescue scenarios.
Ten of the 40 planned Black Hawk UH-60M helicopters have arrived in Australia from the United States under an accelerated delivery schedule, with another two due to arrive by the end of the year.
In total, the helicopters are expected to cost $2.8 billion.
The Black Hawks have often been described as the “work horse” of the Australian Defence Force and are regularly used in logistics operations.
Major General Jeremy King, the army’s head of joint aviation systems, said he was happy to see “an old friend back” in service given he and other army personnel had flown on Black Hawks before they were replaced by the French-made Taipans in 2007.
He described the Black Hawk as a “modern and credible capability that’s going to set us up for success in relation to the challenges of the modern warfare”.
The army had clocked up 1400 flying hours since the first Black Hawks arrived in Australia last September, he said.
King revealed that 28 of the 45 grounded Taipan MRH-90 helicopters had been destroyed, with as much of the air frames being recycled as possible.
Brenton Mellor, the army’s director of aviation capability management, said the Black Hawk helicopters would not be available for use over the “high-risk weather season” because they were still being put through testing and evaluation procedures.
He said that other defence aircraft including the army’s fleet of Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters and the navy’s fleet of MH-60R Romeo helicopters would be able to assist over summer if required.
An inquiry into the deaths of the four personnel who died during training exercises off the Queensland coast in July 2023 heard this month that army aviators had “very little confidence” in the fleet of Taipans before the fatal crash.
The Albanese government is pushing ahead with plans to spend $5.5 billion on a fleet of 29 new Boeing Apache attack helicopters, even though some military experts have argued that attack helicopters are becoming rapidly obsolete in the age of drone warfare.
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