The Australian Army’s Project LAND 4507 Phase 1 UH-60M Black Hawk program is gathering pace, with eight aircraft now in-country and flying training missions, aircrews training in the US, and an initial cadre of Army and industry maintenance and logistics personnel growing.
The first two Black Hawks arrived in Australia last July and have been followed by six more, while a further four are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2024 taking the total to 12.
The first 20 aircraft out of a total of 40 on order will be based at Holsworthy in Sydney with Number 6 Aviation Regiment (6Avn), with the remaining 20 to be operated by 5Avn and based at newly-expanded facilities at Oakey, west of Toowoomba in Queensland.
The Oakey-based Black Hawks will be supported by a small flight of five leased Airbus H135 ‘Juno’ helicopters which were announced in April and recently delivered from surplus UK stocks to provide training and proficiency airframes capacity.
These aircraft are painted in a black and yellow scheme identical to the 18 EC135T2 helicopters of the Joint Helicopter Training School at Nowra. They arrived in Nowra in August and were being re-assembled by Boeing Defence Australia staff before ferrying to Oakey at time of writing.
Lockheed Martin Australia now has more than 150 personnel assigned to the Black Hawk program in Australia.
To support the Black Hawks in service, Lockheed Martin Australia has established a warehouse and procurement team of about 20 people in a commercial warehouse in Sydney’s southwest not far from Holsworthy, and is building up stocks of spare parts as they’re delivered to Australia.
This is an excerpt from APDR. To read the full story, click here.
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