Heading into an expectedly active 2021 hurricane season, when its aircraft are in highest demand, the U.S. Coast Guard will likely have 10 of its MH-65 Dolphin helicopters grounded for lack of spare parts, according to the service’s top officer.
The Coast Guard operates the world’s largest fleet of Dolphins, which were discontinued in 2018, at 98 aircraft. Of those, six are currently grounded because the Coast Guard can’t find parts to fix them and 10 could be flightless when the Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1, Commandant of the Coast Guard Adm. Karl Schultz told lawmakers on April 28.
“We’re really finding some challenges with our 98 Dolphin helicopters,” Schultz said during the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security hearing. “Aerospatiale, or Airbus, the parent company, stopped making those aircraft in 2018. We have the biggest fleet in the world at 98 and things like gearboxes, it’s very difficult to get the parts. Right now, we’re flying them at about 70 percent of programmed hours just because we don’t have the parts to support it. We’re going to have make some tough decisions.”
“We’ve got six on the beach right now that are down from lack of availability of parts, probably 10 by the end of June,” Schultz added. “This is the time of year, hurricane season that kicks off on 1 June, we really want every available asset ready in the barn or out doing other missions.”
The Coast Guard’s current helicopter fleet stands at 98 Dolphins and 48 MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters. Both helicopters are undergoing service life extension programs (SLEP) to extend their useful lives into the mid-2030s. But, Schutlz said the increasing rarity of MH-65 parts means that SLEP is only a temporary fix to a chronic problem. Given sufficient spare gear boxes and other critical flight components, the MH-65 still will exceed its service life well before 2040, when it could transition to some form of Future Vertical Lift aircraft at least in part, Schultz said.
“While completion of the MH-65 and MH-60 SLEP remains an imperative to maintaining current capability, the Coast Guard must immediately begin transitioning towards a single-airframe rotary wing fleet comprised of MH-60 helicopters,” Schultz said in his prepared opening statement.
With more than 4,000 H-60 Black Hawks in various configurations in the wider U.S. military arsenal, that aircraft has a well-established and healthy supply chain that should sustain the Coast Guard for another 20 years or so, Schultz said.
Plans are to reduce the number of Dolphins while increasing the number of Jayhawks in operation, Schultz said. That will be accomplished by taking over operation of Navy MH-60 Seahawks when they have about 8,000-9,000 hours on them, then refurbishing and reconfiguring them to Coast Guard specs. The Coast Guard then plans to put another 20,000 flight hours on the MH-60Ts, he said.
The Coast Guard also is converting hand-me-down Navy Sea MH-60 Sea Hawks with blade-fold capability to MH-60Ts for deployment on some of its larger cutters.
That work is done at the Coast Guard’s Aviation Logistics Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina and can be sped up by increased federal investment in the program, according to Schultz.
“The Coast Guard can assemble MH-60s and increase the MH-60 program of record at our Aviation Logistics Center, using proven production processes for converting and assembling either relatively low hour former Navy hulls in what we call the ‘sundowner’ program, or new hulls from [Sikorsky],” Schultz said. “Transition to an all MH-60 fleet improves mission effectiveness due to the Jayhawk’s greater range, endurance, and power-to-weight ratios, and would serve to streamline the service’s training and logistics systems, while providing for a smaller total fleet inventory.”
