US Military Aircraft Part 4 - Helicopters

Helicopters are terrible in many ways. They're noisy, they're slow, and they're expensive to operate. But they do have one major virtue. They don't have to be moving forward to fly, because they are so ugly that they repel the ground, which means they can take off and land vertically or hover over an area you want to keep an eye on. This is extremely useful if you need to operate somewhere that doesn't have a runway, either because there isn't space to build one or because you haven't had time to do so. This is a common problem that the US military faces, which means that they have a lot of helicopters.

General Transport/Utility

The most basic role of a helicopter is simply to pick people or stuff up and fly it somewhere else, and the majority of the military's helicopters do this. Occasionally, the place is just "over there, where there's a better view", although this role has largely been taken over by drones. For carrying stuff, it's often easier to use a sling load dangling underneath the helicopter, which saves you the trouble of having to land. This is generally not recommended if you're carrying people, although it is done in certain cases.

UH-60 Black Hawk

The Army's standard transport helicopter, the UH-60 is the successor to the "Huey" of Vietnam fame. They operate over a thousand, each capable of carrying 11 troops, 6 stretchers or a 4.5 ton sling load. Typically, they are armed with a couple of machine guns in the doors, although the aircraft are also fitted for a pair of pylons which can be equipped with extra fuel tanks, rocket pods or Hellfire missiles. Widely exported, and the basis for a number of specialized variants, such as the EH-60, with various electronic payloads, the HH-60 rescue version, the MH-60 special ops version for doing sneaky stuff, and the VH-60 VIP helicopter. Scheduled to be replaced by a tiltrotor under the FLRAA program, although budget limits cast doubt on this plan.

CH-47 Chinook

For when the Black Hawk isn't big enough, there's the Chinook. With its distinctive twin-rotor design, the Chinook can carry around 50 troops or 12 tons of cargo, and is another one of the classic designs, dating back to the early 60s and remaining in production today. It has been an export success, with the RAF being a particular fan of the type.

UH-72 Lakota

A rare case of a European aircraft getting bought by the US military, the UH-72 is a military version of the Eurocopter EC145, built at their plant in Mississippi. It serves as a supplement to the larger UH-60 for missions within the US and other permissive areas, as it lacks the systems that the Army requires for combat survivability. Primary missions include pilot training, disaster relief and generally ferrying small amounts of people and cargo around.

MH-139 Grey Wolf

The Air Force also needs helicopters for missions within the US, and also went shopping in Europe, although the MH-139, based on the AW 139 from Leonardo, is badged as a Boeing helicopter and keeping the 139 number for some reason. It recently entered service to replace the venerable UH-1N Twin Huey in roles like patrolling ICBM fields and shuttling VIPs about.

UH-1Y Venom

The MV-22 Osprey forms the backbone of the Marine air transport fleet, although it is not a particularly good helicopter. As a result, they also operate a fleet of smallish helicopters of their own for things like firefighting and roping people into and out of clearings. But because they are the Marines, they had to have their own helicopters instead of just buying Black Hawks. The UH-1Y, loosely based on the Vietnam-era Huey but with a four-bladed rotor to muffle the distinctive "whump-whump" sound, was originally sold as an upgrade to the UH-1Ns that the Marines already had, but someone realized that rebuilding old airframes was a terrible idea and built new ones.

CH-53E Super Stallion

The Marine heavy-lift counterpart to the CH-47, it has a single 7-bladed rotor, three engines, and an 18-ton payload. The Navy also uses the same basic helicopter as the MH-53E Sea Dragon, which primarily does minesweeping but also fills the Navy's heavy-lift mission. Currently about to be replaced by the even bigger and heavier CH-53K King Stallion, which has better engines, composite rotors and a wider cabin.

VH-92 Patriot

For reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone, the Marine Corps is responsible for transporting the President by helicopter. This currently uses a combination of the VH-3, based on the old Sea King, and the VH-60. The first attempt at replacing these produced the VH-71 Kestrel, which was cancelled in 2009 due to massive cost overruns. A second attempt produced the VH-92 Patriot, based on the civilian Sikorsky S-92, which made its first flight as Marine One (like Air Force One, it only bears that callsign if the President is onboard) in September 2024. The Marines also operate a small fleet of VIP V-22s for Presidential support, although the President does not generally fly in them.

Attack Helicopters

Helicopters hadn't existed for very long before someone came up with the idea of hanging guns on them, and they soon became sophisticated machines capable of using a combination of guns, rockets and missiles to wreak havoc on ground forces below. Unfortunately, helicopters by their nature are low and slow, which tends to make attack helicopters relatively vulnerable to air defenses. Careful tactics can mitigate this to some extent, with current doctrine seeming to favor them for operations in the enemy's rear instead of near the front. The US Army is a particular fan of the type, as interservice agreements bar them from operating armed fixed-wing aircraft, and troops on the ground really like having systems they own supporting them.

AH-64 Apache

Ugly and extremely powerful, the Apache is the definitive modern attack helicopter. Capable of carrying 16 Hellfires or a brace of rocket pods, its two crewmen also have a 30mm cannon for use against ground targets. About a quarter of the 800+ Apaches operated by the Army are equipped with the Longbow radar, a mushroom-shaped radar mounted on top of the rotor, which allows the helicopter to expose only the small radome over a ridge or hill, get a clear image of the area below, then pass that data to other Apaches, which can then engage with the radar-guided Longbow Hellfire missile.

AH-1Z Viper

As in so many things, the Marines are allergic to using Army systems, and persist in using an evolved version of the AH-1 Cobra, itself based on the engine and rotor of the UH-1 Huey. As such, the AH-1Z is a close cousin of the UH-1Y, but with two crew, a 20mm cannon, and pylons for missiles or rockets, and can carry the same weapons payload as the Apache, but at a lower cost and without the Longbow system.

AH-6/MH-6 Little Bird

A version of the civilian MD 500 helicopter used by the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Little Bird comes in both troop carrier (MH-6) and light attack (AH-6) versions. Exactly what modifications are involved isn't entirely clear, but the Army appears quite happy with it.

Maritime Helicopters

The helicopter is a vital piece of equipment for a modern warship. It can shuttle people and equipment around, whether or not the recipient wants them, dip a sonar in the ocean to listen for submarines, then follow up with a torpedo if necessary, sweep the ocean for anything that may be of interest and hunt small boats. As a result, everything built these days that's a frigate or bigger has facilities for a helicopter.

MH-60R/S Seahawk

The Navy adapted the basic UH-60 design for shipboard use in the late 70s in the form of the SH-60B Seahawk, although with substantial changes for the different operating environment. Today, the Navy operates two different variants, the ASW-focused MH-60R and the general-purpose MH-60S. The MH-60R is equipped with a dunking sonar, a sonobuoy launcher, and a sophisticated set of ESM, radar and visual sensors. Weapons include torpedoes and Hellfire missiles. The MH-60S is based more closely on the UH-60 airframe and is intended to fulfill all helicopter missions that aren't ASW, including delivering boarding parties, vertical replenishment, hunting small boats, rescuing survivors of crashes and serving as the platform for airborne minesweeping systems. It can also carry Hellfires and rocket pods, as well as door guns.

Next time, we'll turn our attention to the world of recon and rescue aircraft, some of which are also helicopters.