I received an email forward complaining about the U.S. buying Russian helicopters for Afghanistan.
My take: We are giving the Afghans helicopters so that they can take over operations and allow U.S. forces to withdraw. U.S. helicopters are fairly advanced, and would be difficult for a low-tech military to maintain. Also, the U.S. has given advanced aircraft only to its most trusted allies. (Didn’t work out so well with the F-14s and Iran.) I think that it’s probably not a great idea to send Nifty Stuff to unstable governments.
What helicopters are we using now? The UH-60 Black Hawk, CH-46 Sea Knight, CH-47 Chinook, AH-64 Apache, UH-1 Iroquois, and some others. A comparable helicopter to the Russian Mi-17 would be the Black Hawk. The others don’t suit the role, except maybe the Huey; which isn’t as big. ISTM that we don’t really have anything to sell them that A) fulfils the role; B) is not a ‘front line’ aircraft used by the U.S. military; and C) as inexpensive as the Russian counterpart. So a fleet of American helicopters isn’t a reasonable option. I mean, if they need 30 helicopters and the $700 million will only buy 15 American ones, then it’s not going to work.
As for the Mi-17 being a Cold War design, I think that makes them a good option for a less-advanced government. When the Shah was deposed, those F-14s became useless. It’s easier for a less-advanced country to maintain an older, less-advanced design. There’s a reason why the AK-47 assault rifle is so popular around the world, and it’s not just because the Soviets were handing them out like party favours. They’re cheap, reliable, and easy to maintain. The supply chain for parts for the Mi-17 is much shorter, and the parts are less expensive, than for an American helicopter. The Mi-17 makes sense.
Why new ones? Give me a 50-year-old Hughes 269A, and I’ll fly it happily. (No, really. Someone please give me one!) As long as an aircraft is maintained, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be as good as a new one. (And they’re still making the Hughes 269. It’s the Sikorsky S300 now.) But military equipment is different from civilian gear. There are avionics and other things that are more easily built in, than they are to retrofit. It’s also easier and cheaper to standardise a fleet if they are all of similar vintage.
So here are the GQs: Is my assessment correct? Or am I entirely off-base? What are the factual answers to the questions asked in the email?
There’s probably a whole lot of Russian/Soviet helicopters there already. Spare parts, trained mechanics, etc.
With US equipment, they’d have to buy all new tools- their current wrenches are all metric.
And like you said, we don’t give the good stuff to just anybody. But this totally makes sense logistically.
You’re pretty much dead nuts on. Whether the US should, as a matter of policy, insist on buying American products, is a debatable point, but here are the facts:
The Mi-17 was actually designed for use in Afghanistan, and has superior performance in high altitudes compared to other medium to not-quite-heavy lift helicopters.
Afghanistan wants Mi-17s, since they have been flying them for a long time.
The cost of Mi-17s is lower than UH-60s. Occasionally there are news articles comparing the average procurement unit cost of a Mi-17 to the flyaway cost of a UH-60, and it makes them look like they are similarly priced. However, a flyaway cost is simply the cost of one aircraft. An average procurement unit cost is an aircraft plus ground equipment plus trainers plus initial spares plus (usually) some period of contractor maintenance/support.
An Mi-17 transports about twice as many soldiers as a UH-60 does.
As far as the used vs. new, I believe part of the equation is that it is substantially easier to acquire and maintain a common configuration among the fleet if they are bought new – just like you said. When you buy used, you get a bargain, but then you have to figure out how to make 30 (or 50) aircraft come to a common baseline so that they can be efficiently maintained.
For example, I have heard first-hand stories about the Air Force buying King Air B350 turboprops on the used market, intending to outfit them with ISR gear and send them overseas, only to find that each aircraft arrived in a totally different configuration. This one over here was mostly stock because it was used for flight training; that one over there was flown by a dentist and had a different cabin configuration; that one had the bulkhead right here because it was built in 1989, but that one’s bulkhead was there because it was built in 1998, etc. It took months longer and probably a few million bucks more than estimated to deal with every aircraft being its own special flower. Cite.
So, you pay more for new but you get them all off the production line in stable lots. I can’t say what the premium is to buy new, since used aircraft prices are notoriously unpredictable.
Those are helicopters that are still basically in R&D. Nobody has suggested that anyone custom design a helicopter for the Afghans. If Canada had ordered non-developmental helicopters, that would be a different situation.
My mistake, I thought they were a common off-the-shelf variety. I guess installing the cup holders that can fit those swimming pool sized Tim Hortons cups is more of an engineering challenge than I thought.
In any case, Canada really needs to stop ordering military equipment that doesn’t exist yet.
If you look at the MI-17’s Wiki page, it’s in use by just about every nation on Earth capable of fielding helicopters, for combat duty, cargo carrying, fire fighting, etc. If you do a Google Image Search, you can find a couple painted in UN colors as the top results.
I think it’s just a very versatile, well-built, durable, easy-to-maintain piece of hardware. We’re not hostile towards Russia, and neither is Afghanistan, so… why not buy them?
BTW, since you mentioned the Blackhawk, here’s the Royal Thai Army’s statement on the two:
Well, w/o getting into GD I would hardly call the US an ‘occupying force’ in the same breath as the Soviets in terms of Afghanistan. But I too see the irony in:
[ul]
[li]The Soviets invade and get bogged down[/li][li]They introduce their helicopter gunships and make great progress[/li][li]We start giving the Afghans Stinger missiles which seriously hampers the gunships effectiveness[/li][li]The Soviets finally give up[/li][li]9/11 happens and we invade and destroy the Taliban [/li][li]We want to pull out so we give them Soviet-era helicopter gunships![/li][/ul]
Circle of life. Or death…
When I was in Fort Bliss mobilizing for Iraq, the Iraqi Air Force was training on Hips at the air field there. For an old Cold War soldier like me it was a very strange sight.