![]() Neither the MRH-90 nor the Black Hawk will have a deterrent effect in the way nuclear-powered submarines or long-range strike missiles will. So, what’s changed? At some level it’s about China, just as everything in defence and strategic policy today is about China, but not in the way you might expect. While on paper the MRH-90 has more capacity than the Black Hawk, in real life that’s irrelevant if the helicopter isn’t flying. Now, however, after almost the entire $3.7 billion acquisition budget has been spent, the government has announced what should have been done long ago: it will retire the MRH-90 fleet early and acquire a new fleet of Black Hawks. But even though those numbers were shared with Defence’s senior decision-makers, the department couldn’t bring itself to take that step. And the sooner you did it, the more you’d save, by avoiding sinking more acquisition dollars into the MRH-90 and realising the substantially lower operating costs of the Black Hawk. Back when I worked in the Department of Defence, we used to occupy ourselves from time to time calculating how much money the taxpayer would save in the long run if we just walked away from the MRH-90 utility helicopter and bought Black Hawk helicopters instead. ![]() ![]() The sad saga of the MRH-90 Taipan helicopter has been running for a long time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |