Posted on 05/27/2018 8:23:13 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
The army’s fleet of 22 Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopters (ARHs) appears to face an uncertain future with the Department of Defence confirming that they will be replaced in the mid-2020s and that they will not be upgraded in the meantime.
Until then they will continue to receive a number of apparently minor improvements through a capability assurance program.
Enthusiasm for the Tigers has waxed and waned over recent years and now, following another lengthy grounding, a Defence Department spokesperson was prepared only to say: “The capability assurance program is limited and designed to ensure Tiger remains effective until a replacement can be funded. The government will consider options for the ARH later in 2018.”
This seems to indicate that the troubled helicopters have only a short amount of service life left in them, despite the occasional hope that a corner had been turned regarding their reliability and availability.
The straw that could have broken the camel’s back was a crash in Mali last July when a German Tiger on anti-insurgency operations disintegrated in midair, killing both the crew. The crash was so violent that it was initially believed that the helicopter had experienced a catastrophic structural failure, possibly through the loss of one of four rotor blades.
It now appears that the accident was caused by a software error in the helicopter’s flight-control system — unique to the German configuration — that meant it suddenly pitched forward during high-speed flight. It seems that this occurred without any warning and was so sudden that it gave the experienced crew no chance to recover the aircraft.
The violence of the event appears to have caused it to break up in flight.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.com.au ...
Apache clone?
What do they need a military for anyway?
They learned their lesson during WWII. The Aussies were with us in Nam and they were excellent soldiers. We liked working with them.
Australia actually has a powerful military for a nation of less than 25 million people
Airbus seems to have quality control and validation problems with flight control software:
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296
(Wikipedia disclaimers apply)
3) http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/Ariane5accidentreport.html
Knock wood, US contractors do a better job with such things. What goes around, comes around. That’s why I don’t suggest gloating.
“Knock wood, US contractors do a better job with such things.”
When I worked for a US division of the French company and military contractor, Schlumburger, I learned a few startling facts. The company decided what it was going to do and the French military bought it. As a result, the hardware and software were much less usable than would otherwise be the case. For example of this, the French continued using a metric home built version of the Ford flathead V8 into the seventies. (An American discovered there was a warehouse full of these engines in France, bought them all and brought them here. As a result, you sometimes see all metric Ford flatheads.)
Once my company leaned heavily on the French division we worked with to send us a shipment of recorders before they pulled their annual 30-45 day vanishing act. We got the recorders the day after they disappeared. Not one of them worked, despite all the data being signed off saying they did work. Against orders we broke the seals and opened them up to see if we could fix them rather than waiting for the French to get back from vacation. They had no power supplies. This means all the data they sent was a forgery. When they got back they poo-poo’d our annoyance, saying they didn’t have time to get the power supplies finished but would send them to us in a few weeks. (We had a schedule to meet for the Canadian Navy.) (And, yes, there is a Canadian Navy.)
In any case, the European approach to military hardware appears to be different and less military friendly than the American approach.
They are excellent soldiers and it WAS a pleasure to have them with us. However, the government worked with Obama in his last days to screw Trump and America over by taking the radical Islamic refugee males of fighting age Australia refused to take, knowing it was completely contrary to what Trump was voted in for. In short, Australia gave Trump a big public middle finger in his first few days in office.
Second, a top Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, with solid ties to the Clinton Foundation, has both hands bloody with the attempted coup of our President by setting up Papadopoulos in London, with help from Obama/FBI spy Stefan Halper, who fed Papadopoulus with the false info in advance, the arranged for the meet in a bar.
So Australia and the UK have undone all good will there ever was between us as far as I’ll ever be concerned. It’s the US with President Trump against the NWO.
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