NAVAL AIR STATION NORTH ISLAND, Calif. — The West Coast training squadron for the Navy MH-60R Seahawk multi-role helicopter is slated to initiate its first student aviator on Oct. 1.
In January, Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 41 accepted four MH-60Rs, which were rebuilt from earlier SH-60Bs by Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin.
The 500-strong squadron currently is developing tactics, operational schemes and maintenance procedures. Aviators fly the Romeo models alongside 10 older SH-60Bs. In the next four years it will replace them with 11 factory-fresh Romeos and supply five to seven West Coast squadrons with several dozen pilots apiece as they transition to the new helicopter.
The Navy is replacing about 250 antisubmarine warfare SH-60Bs and SH-60Fs with a similar number of new-build MH-60Rs under a $2.5 billion program.
The H-60 airframe is employed by the Navy under the model designations SH-60B (Bravo), SH-60F (Foxtrot), HH-60H (Hotel), MH-60S (Sierra) and MH-60R (Romeo).
The Romeo is equipped with new sensors and modern avionics, wired for weapons growth and designed for rapid reconfiguring for mine-warfare, humanitarian and even air-to-air missions countering low, slow-moving aircraft. It is intended to complement the MH-60S cargo helicopters and eventually replace the S-3B Viking antisubmarine warfare aircraft.
The Navy wants to only operate MH-60R and MH-60S helicopters in the future, rather than the seven models currently in use. The consolidation could save the service $1 billion annually, officials say.
“The future of naval aviation is Hornets and helicopters,” says HSM-41 skipper Cmdr. J.C. Shaub. “We’ve finally been recognized as a force multiplier.”
The MH-60R combines the capabilities from earlier Seahawk models. “The Romeo is a Foxtrot plus a Bravo plus a Hotel — all in one aircraft,” says HSM-41 Aviation Warfare Systems Operator Nick Hunter.
The Romeo incorporates the Bravo’s surface search and sonobuoy capabilities with the dipping sonar of the SH-60F and the missile armament of the search-and-rescue HH-60H. This hybrid missions suite is installed in the same basic Seahawk airframe — which, according to HSM-41 Structural Mechanic Stephen Lind, is the “same, except there’s an extra hydraulics system.”
“The Romeo does everything the Bravo does ... but does it with more fidelity and better avionics,” Shaub explains. “The HH-60B is based on 1970s black boxes. This airframe is developed with the latest and greatest stuff.”
Plus, Shaub adds, “We have the ability to grow as technology develops.” The Romeo’s cockpit has open-architecture computers and software, and its wing pylons include wiring for future weapons. The Romeo design philosophy, Shaub says, is “flexibility.” Bravos deployed for Hurricane Katrina and tsunami relief duty in recent years had to go through difficult de-installations to make them ready for transport and cargo hauling, but Shaub says that equipment in the Romeo’s crowded cabin can be pulled out in just minutes.
The flexibility extends to its “office,” where two pilots fly the aircraft and manage information fed into the cockpit by a sensor operator in the cabin. In the Bravo, the right seat is hardwired for flying and the left seat for information management. In the Romeo, both seats can perform both roles, facilitating better teamwork during high-intensity missions.
All these new systems mean a steep learning curve for some HSM-41 maintainers who got their start working on Bravos. Some, including Avionics Technician Stephen Williams, did stints at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, where they learned about the MH-60R before the aircraft’s initial fielding to HSM-41, but others have had to learn on the job.
“It’s all hands-on training for me. I’ve been learning as I go,” says Avionics Electrician Kyle Elhard.
In HSM-41’s hangar on this island facility in the San Diego Bay, Elhard, Williams, Lind and others are literally writing the book on MH-60R maintenance. Assisting them are Sikorsky employees who share the HSM-41 workspaces. Elhard says the Sikorsky reps have been particularly helpful in working out kinks in the supply chain, and getting the logistics system accustomed to new Romeo-specific parts.
Despite the challenges, sailors here say things would be even tougher if the new aircraft weren’t a direct derivative of the squadron’s old aircraft. HSM-41 maintainers measure their educations on the Romeo in months. “If we had a different aircraft that wasn’t an H-60,” Elhard observes, “it would take years to get where we were with the Bravo.”
When everyone is trained up and comfortable with the new aircraft, Elhard expects maintenance to get even easier than it was with the Bravo. “The Romeo is a healthier aircraft,” he says — even the four remanufactured airframes. Plus, the Romeo includes an organic diagnostics system that cuts back the exploratory phase of troubleshooting.
“We troubleshoot from a laptop now,” Williams explains. “You just plug it into the aircraft and it says where you need to look.”
Bravo squadrons converting to the Romeo will call on HSM-41’s experience to ease their transitions. As Elhard puts it, “We’re breaking down doors for everybody else so they can have an easier time.”
What’s more, some HSM-41 personnel will transfer to seed other units’ maintenance shops. Hunter is slated to join HSM-70 in Jacksonville, Fla. In coming years, that squadron will play the same role on the East Coast that HSM-41 is playing on the West Coast — training up Romeo aircrew for former Bravo squadrons.
Just like the maintenance routines, the Romeo aircrew training regimen is developing in an evolutionary manner. “We took the Bravo curriculum and added the Romeo-specific stuff,” Hunter says.
Shaub says that the new curriculum will take a third longer than the Bravo’s — 44 weeks for pilots — because of the aircraft’s multiple missions and advanced systems. But, he adds, aircrew will be better trained thanks to an advanced simulator coming on line.
In the earliest stages of HSM-41’s transition to the MH-60R, before there were any Romeos on the ramp, the squadron borrowed MH-60S simulator time from San Diego squadrons. The two aircraft share a common cockpit.
Later, HSM-41 sent pilot instructors to Patuxent River to develop a Romeo-specific training device in collaboration with the firm Manned Flight Simulators. That simulator is currently being set up at North Island. It will simulate the acoustics of different environments, including shallow waters, to improve crews’ skills in littoral warfare — especially against quiet diesel submarines.
This month, the Navy awarded CAE USA a $40 million contract to design and manufacture two simulators — one for the MH-60R and one for the SH-60B. The MH-60R trainer will be delivered to Naval Station Mayport, Fla., in late 2008, while the SH-60B simulator will be shipped to Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, in spring 2009.
Each system consists of two training devices — the operational flight trainer used to train the pilot and co-pilot, and the weapons tactics trainer used to train the sensor operators and rear-crew.
Both simulators will also be able to network with other Navy training assets, according to CAE.
The Bravo squadrons here at North Island, for their part, are adapting to the new operational environments that gave rise to the MH-60R. The plan is to ease their transition to the Romeo aircraft and support the HSM-41 efforts.
Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron Light (HSL) 43 Bravo pilot Lt. Nate Velcio says the aircraft are performing more of the surveillance missions for which the Romeo is optimized. On a recent Persian Gulf deployment aboard the Aegis cruiser Princeton (CG-59), Velcio’s detachment flew mostly “search and classify” missions, which he describes as “in the middle of the night, using the radar to find contacts then doing a visual ID [using the forward-looking infra-red sensor, or FLIR]. Then you beam the information to the ship and it gets relayed to the aircraft carrier then to shore bases to build up the global satellite picture.”
Velcio says search-and-classify missions are new for the Bravo force. The Romeo, on the other hand, will perform these missions from the outset, calling on its inverse synthetic aperture radar and new FLIR. The Bravo force and the first Romeos are equipped with the proprietary “Hawklink” data-link for relaying information to host ships, but in coming years the Romeo will be fitted with Link 16 terminals to bypass the middleman and plug the aircraft directly into a joint theater network.
According to a deployment scheme worked out decades ago with the very first light naval helicopters, SH-60Bs operate from frigates, destroyers and cruisers in one- and two-aircraft detachments with limited command infrastructure. Fleet squadrons support usually two detachments at a time. MH-60R squadrons, like the six-aircraft SH-60F/HH-60H squadrons, will deploy in their entirety — up to 11 aircraft and 200 personnel — with carrier strike groups and expeditionary strike groups.
The squadron commander with a core of aircraft will remain on the carrier or assault ship while detachments fan out on escorts. “Deploying as entire command on carrier, the commander has tighter umbrella around his team,” Shaub says.
This should elevate the helicopter’s role in carrier-group and expeditionary-group operations to a “more global and less supporting role,” says HSM-41 Aviation Warfare Systems Operator Xavier Sessions.
To test the Romeo deployment model, HSL-47 has deployed SH-60Bs to a CSG. The community calls this experiment “B2C” for “Bravo to Carrier”.
MH-60R development is at an advanced stage, but at least two questions remain. One is whether the aircraft will operate with the new littoral combat ship. “There’s an option to buy 50 more Romeos to outfit the littoral combat ship,” Shaub says. He adds that the Navy is still studying the LCS aviation configuration. The vessel might host Romeos, unmanned aerial vehicles or both, according to Shaub.
Also, while the Romeo is wired to accept advanced defensive aid subsystems — such as radar, infrared jammers and countermeasures — aircraft will not be routinely fitted with these systems, Shaub says. He adds that this will limit the Romeo’s utility in high-threat overland scenarios and might mean that the Navy retains HH-60Hs equipped with defensive systems beyond the retirement dates of the Bravos and Foxtrots. If that happens, Hotels might be embedded in Romeo squadrons, as all Foxtrots will have been displaced by the new helicopter.