Taipans helicopter grounding ‘leaves nation exposed’ to fires, floods

The grounding of the Australian Defence Force’s MRH-90 Taipan helicopters has left the nation exposed on the cusp of a summer of floods and fires, a military expert has warned.

An MRH-90 Taipan Multi-Role Helicopter.

Grounding of the Australian Defence Force’s MRH-90 Taipan multi-role helicopters has come at the worst possible time as the nation faces a summer of natural disasters.

Strategic Analysis Australia head of research Marcus Hellyer warned the “capability gap” in the military’s helicopter fleet would undermine the ADF’s ability to respond to fires and floods in coming months.

Following a fatal collision near Hamilton Island in September, which killed four crew members, Defence Minister Richard Marles announced the MRH-90 Taipans would be shelved a year before their planned retirement date and scheduled replacement by a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters.

The government confirmed it had received three of the 40 twin-engine utility helicopters and was investigating a way to expedite their delivery from the US.

But this week’s Cairns floods underscored the ADF’s dire lack of helicopters when they were needed most, Dr Hellyer said.

“The bottom line is that when the government said ‘we’re not putting the MRH-90 back into service’ earlier this year, we had barely started the transition to the new Black Hawk fleet,” he said.

“So we essentially retired a fleet of around 40 MRH-90s, and at the time the government said we only had about three Black Hawks in service.

“And three doesn’t really give you anything, three is not a capability, particularly when you’re trying to build up to about 40 or so Black Hawks. So we have a classic capability gap.”

Defence said it would deploy two army heavy-lift Chinook helicopters and two twin-­engine AW-139 helicopters from Townsville to assist in rescue operations in the floods in far north Queensland on Monday.

Dr Hellyer said it didn’t appear that Australia had a Black Hawk helicopter available to deploy for disaster relief.

“Defence said it was going to send two Chinook helicopters, which are big helicopters,” he said.

“They’re a good capability but they’re not the sort of agile helicopter you need to pull people off roofs, they’re big, they have a lot of downdraft.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denied the grounding of the Taipan fleet had made any impact on the nation’s disaster response capabilities.

“We have been able to provide four helicopters here in a very short time,” he said.

“The ADF resources were here very quickly. HMAS Cairns assisted with some of the rescue by making boats available.

“The decision was made about the Taipans after the tragedy that occurred in the Whitsundays on the basis of appropriate safety recommendations.”

Dr Hellyer said the capability gap left open many questions about the ADF’s preparedness to respond to a military threat as well as to support “state and territory and local governments when we have disasters”.

“We won’t be able to conduct military combat operations, for example, flying troops off our (amphibious assault) ships,” he said.

The warning comes less than a year after the Defence Strategic Review argued defence forces should be the “last resort” when it came to domestic disasters, due to the increasing tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The review noted the ADF had been called to assist during bushfires, floods and the Covid-19 pandemic in recent years.

The Department of Defence and Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt were contacted for comment.