MD Helicopters Inc.,* Mesa, Arizona, was awarded a $1,385,497,987 firm-fixed-price foreign military sales (Afghanistan) contract for procurement of an estimated quantity of 150 MD 530F aircraft and required production support services to include program management, delivery support, pilot training and maintenance. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 31, 2022. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-17-D-0089).
Doesn’t that sound like an awful lot of helicopters for a relatively small service?
And who in the hell are going to fly these attack/scout birds? Are we giving them to the Afghani forces? If so then I anticipate a lot of destroyed aircraft in the future.
This is a follow on contract, they have been using the Little Birds since I believe 2011 with around 27 in service as of July 2016. Undergoing training by U.S. funded contractors at Shindand Air Base, Afghanistan, concurrent with their training they are flying combat missions. Must be working since they are buying a lot more, of course I bet they are using U.S. dollars to do so.
IIRC, Boeing Helicopters markets the A/MH-6i (I think Saudi Arabia bought a batch) and MD Helicopters which was spun off from the original McDonnell Douglas company sells these MD-530F helos. Aren’t both of these descendants of the original Vietnam-era OH-6A Cayuse?
Good old Afghanistan; what a cash cow the Pentagon has there, obscene corruption.
They should all be built with a secret destruct charge that can be remotely detonated
for when the country folds up, unless we stay there forever.
I think they would first have to have been “unfolded” before they could “fold up”.
They’ll probably get good and trained up on their nice newly US bought helicopters. Then when they decide they don’t want to be in the Afghan Army (if that’s what they call it) anymore and just leave, they’ll take their new helicopters with them and use them against us…at least until they run out of ammo and fuel. Hopefully we’ll be able to shoot them down first.
Basically correct but Boeing much later. I did OH-6A air frame school in early 1983 after flight school. Same model expanded into MH-6A and AH-6A depending on role for transport or attack, and continued through C model. Flew the MH-6 in and out of Honduras into Nicaragua in mid 1984 through 1985, partly out of Palmerola and a little place on the north coast called Brus Laguna that had almost what could be called an airstrip. Numerous unmarked cargo aircraft landed there though.
Taxpayer funded helicopters for the Fuzzy Wuzzies. Brilliant.
Why not just build them and use them for target drones? Same corporate profits and we’d at least derive some benefits from them before they’re destroyed.
I knew a Nam Cobra pilot and the story that comes to mind is how they would load beer cans in the 2.75 rocket tubes, fly as high as they could go until the pilots got too cold to stand it then power dive back to base.
