Sea Dragon helicopter: Troubled past, unclear future

[unhappycamper]

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/02/sea-dragon-helicopter-troubled-past-unclear-future



An MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter performs mine countermeasure training using the MK-105 sled in the Persian Gulf on Nov. 12, 2007.

Sea Dragon helicopter: Troubled past, unclear future
By Mike Hixenbaugh
The Virginian-Pilot
© February 23, 2014

NORFOLK

The Navy started making plans in the late 1990s to retire the most powerful and crash-prone helicopters in its fleet.

By then, several of the service’s MH-53E Sea Dragons – the only U.S. helicopter capable of towing a specialized sled through water to detect and clear mines – were approaching the end of their planned service lives, and Navy leadership needed to make a decision: Invest a significant amount of money to keep the helicopters flying, or develop a replacement.

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But a plan to outfit a smaller helicopter to hunt underwater mines fizzled. New technology didn’t work as designed. Shipping lane security threats increased after 9/11, along with demand for the Sea Dragon’s unique capabilities. And as a result, retirement of the Cold War-era aircraft got pushed back from 2008 to 2012, and then from to 2012 to sometime next decade.

Over time, “the Navy slowly but surely kind of forgot” about the Sea Dragon community, Capt. Todd Flannery said in an interview with The Virginian-Pilot last fall, a year after a spate of crashes overseas prompted the service to take a hard look at the program.