If
you’re in the market for a baker’s dozen of refurbished Sikorsky S-61T
helicopters, the U.S. State Department will happily sell you the
ones it has sitting in a hangar in southern Florida. The State Department had
originally planned to buy more than 100 of these choppers to move diplomats and
other personnel in high-risk areas,
such as Afghanistan.
Delays and other issues left it with a fleet of less than 20, most of which
went straight into storage.
The
General Services Administration (GSA) is already auctioning off the
first five S-61Ts – with the U.S. civil registration numbers N107WK, N122WU,
N375WS, N575AW, and N898WC – each of which has a starting bid price of
$500,000. This does not meet an unspecified reserve price for a final sale,
though. The State Department plans to sell its remaining fleet of these
helicopters, 13 in total, via GSA within six months, according to the
Department’s Press Relations Office.
“There is no longer a State Department
mission requirement for them,” the State Department told The War Zone in a statement via Email. “These specific aircraft will not be
replaced.”
The
S-61Ts were refurbished ex-U.S. Navy and NASA SH-3 Sea Kings,
which were themselves military variants of the S-61 series. The Sea King has
been all but retired from U.S. military service for years now. The U.S. Marine
Corps is still using heavily modified VH-3D Sea Kings,
more commonly known as Marine Ones, to shuttle around the President of the
United States, their family, and their closest advisors, but is planning on
replacing them with new VH-92Asover
the next four years.
SIKORSKY
A Sikorsky S-61T demonstrator.
The
State Department S-61Ts were based on donor airframes that came straight from
Navy. That service had retired the bulk of its Sea Kings in the 1990s, but did
continue using them in very limited numbers into the late-2000s. The
State Department obtained other SH-3s from the Bone Yard at
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. The very last of Navy's SH-3s had
originally rolled off of Sikorsky's production line in the 1970s, though many
did receive significant upgrades in the decades that followed.
Sikorsky
developed the S-61T conversion process with Carson Helicopters, which
involved a major overhaul of the airframes, as well as the addition of
significant upgrades. The updates included a
new main rotor assembly with five Carson composite material blades, a glass
cockpit, improved avionics and other mission systems, and modular wiring
assemblies to rapidly install additional systems per the customer’s
request.
The
State Department had agreed to purchase up to 110 S-61Ts when
it signed its contract with Sikorsky in 2010. The specific requirements for the
Air Wing's helicopters included adding missile approach warning sensors, decoy
flare launchers, added armor for the crew, and provisions for
door-mounted GAU-17/A Miniguns.
CARSON HELICOPTERS
A side-by-side comparison of an older-model SH-3
Sea King or commercial S-61 cockpit, at left, and the glass cockpit found on
the S-61T.
At the time, the deal, which was
potentially worth up to $1.675 billion and also included purchases of a number
of refurbished short- and long-fuselage commercial S-61N helicopters with
similar upgrades, was seen a major win for the Connecticut-headquartered
helicopter maker. The company hoped that the sales to the State Department
would help promote the S-61T upgrade package to additional customers, as well.
The
exact unit price that the State Department ultimately paid for each of the
helicopters it acquired is unclear. Carson had previously upgraded a number of
late-model Navy SH-3s with its composite blades and new avionics at a cost
of around $3.5 million per
chopper. Whatever the case, the cost was undoubtedly significantly higher than
the $500,000 starting bid in the current GSA auctions.
The
State Department planned for these choppers to primarily support the operations
of its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs’ Office of
Aviation, also known as INL/A or the State Department Air Wing, in Afghanistan.
To this day, the Air Wing runs a shuttle service called Embassy Air with
five-minute flights between Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport and the
U.S. Embassy.
The Air
Wing, which has more than 200 aircraft and helicopters of various types in
total, also performs a number of other missions in Afghanistan, as well as
other sites around the world, and runs a similar Embassy Air service in Iraq
and Jordan. You can read about these various missions in more detail hereand here.
SIKORSKY
The first S-61T for the State Department makes its
maiden flight in 2014. This helicopter, N898WC, is among those that GSA is
already auctioning off.
But for
reasons that largely remain unclear, the State Department encountered
significant delays in acquiring the S-61Ts. In 2013,
there were difficulties in getting the improved avionics package, which
Sikorsky obtained through Cobham, certified with the Federal Aviation
Administration.
That same year,
Carson suffered a major scandal when Levi Phillips, its head of maintenance at
the time, plead guilty to fraud over an accident in 2008 in which one of its
S-61Ns crashed in California, killing a U.S. Forest Service official and seven
firefighters.
CARSON HELICOPTERS
A Carson Helicopter S-61 with an aerial
firefighting conversion dumps its payload of water.
The
operator’s manual Carson had supplied had false weight and takeoff power data.
As part of his plea deal, Philipps subsequently testified against the company’s
Vice President, Steven Metheny. In 2015,
Metheny went to prison over the crash.
Whatever
the exact issues were in acquiring the S-61Ts, by 2014, the State Department
had still not taken delivery of a single one of the helicopters, though it had
received 16 refurbished S-61Ns. By the next year,
the Air Wing had finally obtained 15 S-61Ts, but 10 of them were sitting idle
in storage at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. Of the other five, two were
flying Air Wing missions from Cyprus, while the other three were deployed in
Iraq. To the best of our knowledge, none of them ever went to Afghanistan,
though the S-61Ns did.
US DEPARTMENT OF STATE
An Air Wing S-61N circa 2013.
“It
should be noted that the acquisition of helicopters for Iraq and Afghanistan
was not without a documented cost benefit analysis, but options were limited
due to time constraints for fielding the aircraft,” INL told the State
Department’s Inspector General during an audit of all its aircraft
fleets, which came out in September 2018. “It was only later
that excess DoD CH-46 aircraft became available and were obtained and employed
due to delays in S-61 production and delivery. Once CH-46s were fielded, they
proved to be better suited for the Afghanistan environment which led to
eventual disposal of the S-61N helicopters.”
The Air
Wing's CH-46Es came from the U.S. Marine Corps, which had replaced them
with MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotors.
These helicopters are still in service in Afghanistan, including in the Embassy
Air role in Kabul. This also explains why the State Department is divesting
them without a direct replacement. It already had helicopters filling the roles
the S-61Ts were supposed to perform.
DAN STERN
An Air Wing CH-46E in Afghanistan.
However,
“the Department is acquiring some used UH-60 helicopters from the Department of
Defense to replace other existing aging helicopters that are in service,” State
Department’s Press Office noted in its statement. As of September 2018, the Air
Wing had 22 Black Hawks, which it had obtained via the U.S. Army’s Black Hawk
Exchange and Sales Team program, or BEST.
Private companies have also been scooping these up,
too. Contractors are working to refurbish and upgrade the Air Wing's UH-60s, as
well as those still in Army service, to
include things such as glass cockpits and improved avionics, as well.
It will
be interesting to see who might be willing to take the remaining S-61Ts off of
the State Department’s hands. There are a number of private companiesstill
operating various S-61 series helicopters, including Carson, which could be
interested in acquiring the choppers.
Existing S-61 operators use these
choppers to support offshore oil operations, for VIP transport duties, and
aerial firefighting, among other jobs. The prospect of acquiring additional,
like-new S-61Ts with additional upgrades, could be very attractive, especially
if the final sale price remains relatively low.
If you are interested in picking up
any of the former State Department helicopters, you can place bids on any of
the five on auction now through April 18, 2019.
Contact the author: jtrevithickpr@gmail.com
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