IN DETAIL: Australian Army announces IOC for Black Hawk

The Australian Army controversially cut short the careers of its MRH90 helicopters and is replacing them with 40 UH-60M Black Hawks. The Royal Australian Navy already has 23 MH-60R Seahawk helicopters, with another 13 coming. Significantly, both aircraft are pretty much identical to those operated by their parent services, the US Army and US Navy. Why does this matter? Read on…

Gregor Ferguson

The basic shape of the Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter hasn’t changed much in the 50 years the aircraft has been flying. And its basic mission hasn’t changed much either: it carries 12 fully equipped troops up to 320nm by day and night and delivers them into battle, or extracts them, and can wear a fair bit of battle damage in so doing.

But the equipment embodied in the aircraft has undergone significant change and will undergo even greater change in the future. The manufacturer’s road map includes more power, a digital twin, digital backbone to support advanced avionics and capabilities, autonomy and robotics and what the company calls ‘Launched Effects’. And the good thing from Australia’s point of view is that these are being pioneered and certified by the US Army – the Australian Army bears little direct risk.

The Australian Army, a conservative force that is still learning about the engineering and logistics challenges of managing its own fleet of aircraft, in mid-February declared Initial Operating Capability (IOC) for its nascent fleet of 12 UH-60M Black Hawks, the first of which arrived in 2023. This milestone means the aircraft are able to support counter-terrorism operations in Australia and, says Defence, remediate capability gaps associated with the withdrawal from service of the MRH90 Taipan fleet.

“The delivery of this capability signifies one of the fastest initial phases of a capability acquisition in recent times and showcases the optimisation of the Australian Army in order to meet our strategic circumstances,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles.

These aircraft are the first of 40 acquired to replace the Army’s 47 Airbus NH90 helicopters (dubbed the MRH90 in Australian service) and go back to the aircraft which the MRH90 was intended to replace. The Black Hawk was originally acquired by the RAAF in 1988 as the S-70A9 under a Direct Commercial Sale (DCS) agreement from Sikorsky and phased out from 2007. In the interim period Sikorsky Aircraft was acquired by Lockheed Martin.

The ‘new’ Black Hawk is the UH-60M, almost identical to the US Army variant and acquired through the US Army under the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) mechanism.

The Army’s MRH90s were summarily grounded in 2023 and controversy still surrounds their disposal. Meanwhile, the Army had lacked a tactical battlefield or anti-terrorism helicopter capability for nearly two years, but neither the Minister nor the Army seem to consider this a strategic risk. Seven more Blackhawks will arrive in 2025, and the remainder in 2026-27.

Maintaining an identical aircraft configuration to that of the US Army means the Australian Army’s Black Hawks can do anything the US Army’s aircraft can do. So long as the Australian Army doesn’t want ‘exotic’, Australia-only modifications and capabilities, every US Army approval and certification applies equally to Australian aircraft.

Secondly, it means that training of aircrews  and maintainers can be basically the same – which could be important.

Thirdly, any modifications and upgrades introduced by the US Army will probably find their way on to Australian Black Hawks as well. The UH-60M will be recapitalised at the US Army’s Corpus Christi base in Texas from 2035 in order to embody many of these upgrades, according to Sikorsky, which EX² visited in December 2024.

76 ‘Hawk’ airframes

Lockheed Martin Australia and its subsidiary, Sikorsky Australia, will maintain the Australian Defence Force’s Blackhawks and Seahawks which will represent a significant, and growing, workload until the effort plateaus around the end of this decade. The UH-60M and the RAN’s MH-60R have a lot in common with each other, Sikorsky Australia points out, and will see an eventual fleet of 76 ‘Hawks’. Having a larger fleet in-country makes the case for doing more in-country compelling. The company is already looking at 70 separate components on the Seahawk, for example, including rotor blades and drive shafts, and will increase this to include avionics over the next few years.

The Blackhawks are based initially at Holsworthy, near Sydney, but as numbers increase the fleet is expanding to Oakey, west of Brisbane, while the Seahawks will be based at RANAS Nowra. Eventually, about five aircraft will be based at the Australian Army Aviation Training Centre at Oakey with the remainder spread between Special Operations Command (SOCOMD) at Holsworthy and the two relocated tactical transport squadrons serving with the 5^th Aviation Regiment at Oakey.

The Blackhawk maintenance capability dwindled when the S-70A9s were retired; this is being re-established under a $340 million, five-year contract awarded to Lockheed Martin Australia last year. The ADF’s intent is to shadow the parent US Navy and US Army configurations for Seahawk and Black Hawk helicopters so there will be periodic sensor, avionic and airframe/propulsion upgrades to maintain commonality with the US fleet through their lives of type. And a significant proportion of this work – possibly all of it – will be done in Australia.

Sikorsky Australia is already doing Periodic Maintenance Interval (PMI) servicing – essentially, depot-level maintenance – on RAN helicopters and in 2023 conducted a successful ‘proof of concept’ PMI on a US Navy helicopter. This proved the RAN’s maintenance procedures and skills match those of the US Navy and could result in Nowra becoming another site where the much-travelled US Navy gets its helicopters serviced and repaired. The same could happen with US Army Black Hawks, if the need arises – the US Army doesn’t operate as much in the vicinity of Australia, though this could change over time.

Roadmap

The US Army roadmap for the Black Hawk helicopter is significant and is likely to be followed faithfully by the Australian Army. Along with new GE Aerospace T901 Improved Turbine Engines (ITE), for which, at the time of writing, ground runs have begun at Stratford, the roadmap includes the Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA), which enables an all-new digital backbone; full autonomy, which the company has demonstrated already to both DARPA and the US Army; a Digital Twin, enabling accelerated testing of modifications and upgrades and predictive maintenance of both the airframe and the systems aboard it; and what Sikorsky describes as ‘Launched Effects’.

The ITE upgrade will provide 50% more power with a reduced fuel burn, claims Sikorsky. This and simplified, streamlined maintenance is supposed to reduce the cost of ownership and improve mission readiness. First flight of a modified test bed is scheduled for this calendar year.

The autonomous modifications are important: in 2022 under DARPA’s ALIAS (Aircrew Labor In-cockpit Automation System) program Sikorsky successfully flew an uncrewed Black Hawk using its MATRIX autonomy system. This made the Black Hawk an Optionally Piloted Vehicle, or OPV. However, Sikorsky’s aim is actually to reduce pilot workload and the potential for accidents such as Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) rather than produce a fleet of autonomous aircraft.

At the AUSA Show in Washington DC late last year Sikorsky used the Blackhawk’s OPV and fully autonomous capabilities to demonstrate what it terms Contested Logistics to the US Army by launching an uncrewed Blackhawk in Stratford, 300 miles away, and controlling it with just an iPad located in Washington.

At the US Army’s periodic Project Convergence exercise Sikorsky has conducted a series of classified demonstrations of Launched Effects, demonstrating things like Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T), kinetic attacks, Electronic Warfare and ISR. These proved that firstly, a helicopter actually could launch (and occasionally recover) UASs; and, secondly, the ability to do that expands significantly the radius of influence and action of a Black Hawk.

MOSA

The Black Hawk’s MOSA architecture is key to the aircraft’s OPV and autonomous capabilities and its Launched Effects because it delivers better-integrated communications links. Sikorsky has done six open architecture verification trials with the US Army already, integrating things like new radios with much greater ease and speed than hitherto.

But MOSA will likely have a significant effect on the growth in Black Hawk’s role by enabling enhanced Launched Effects. The Black Hawk will be able to deliver Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) for fire missions or for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. Using a Common Launch Tube (probably very similar to the sonobuoy dispenser on the Seahawk, acknowledges Sikorsky, though without going into specifics) the Black Hawk will be able to launch UASs – and it has already launched UASs such as the Anduril Altius loitering multi-mission UAS from external rails. Some of those UASs might be able to recover back on board the helicopter, but most will be either direct attack drones and not designed to return, or ISR drones that will recover back to friendly territory and then land on the ground.

The ISR product and any imagery is fed back via wireless link into the US Army Joint Fires System either directly or via the Black Hawk itself. And that’s where the MOSA comes in: it simplifies the integration and handling of data, both for control of UASs and for handling of any associated ISR product.

The exact configuration of transmitters and receivers, like the UASs themselves and their launchers, is being looked at closely by the US Army. So is the issue of autonomy, says Sikorsky, because as the aircraft can do more the workload for the pilots will increase inexorably. Sikorsky believes partial autonomy will be a vital aid to pilots; its MATRIX software, the company believes, is best in class and it has coined the term ‘Intelligent Co-Pilot’ as a shorthand for what it says the system can do for the pilot. One thing’s for sure, acknowledges the company, autonomy is a big growth industry.

This is the portfolio of emerging Black Hawk capability that the Australian Army can select from; and, as noted earlier, most if not all of the upgrade work will be done in Australia by Lockheed Martin Australia.

With an eye on the re-capitalisation effort from 2035, Sikorsky is currently delivering its 11^th batch of helicopters under a Multi-Year Procurement arrangement which will see the company deliver aircraft to the US Army until 2032. The US Army has 2,135 aircraft at present; more than 5,000 Black Hawks have been delivered in all to customers around the world – 600 of them in the Asia-Pacific – and have racked up more than 15 million flight hours with, the company says, a 92% operational readiness rate.

The UH-60M Black Hawk entered service with the US Army in 2007 and the fleet lead has now flown some 8,000 hours. While dynamic components such as landing gear, rotor heads and tail rotor components need rigorous examination and servicing at set intervals, the Black Hawk airframe itself has proved remarkably durable: the company says airframe maintenance is ‘on condition’.

The US Army will fly Black Hawks until 2070, Sikorsky told the media at Stratford. The Australian Army’s life of type for the Black Hawk isn’t clear at this stage, but the ADF very rarely retires its equipment early so we can probably expect to see Black Hawks supporting the Australian Army past 2050. By then the Black Hawk should have evolved into a still-recognisable but much more capable aircraft.

Disclosure: EX² visited Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, as a guest of Lockheed Martin Australia.