[decimon]

This is not good.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

European-designed helicopters

Never send a socialist to do a real man's work.

[True Republican Patriot]

This appears to be a full blown Disaster.Cancel the darn order and buy American. 1400 lbs of firewater is almost 50% less than the standard bucket. You cant work on two patients at a time sounds to be a real Deal Breaker1 But the best one is to have a cockpit temp in excess of 1104 deg. on an 80 deg. day. What happens when the outside temp hits 110 deg. as it does in the Southwest all the time. Sounds like $2.5 BILLION of European Crap.

[proudusvet]

I totally agree with you and the report, as of right now, The National Training Center(NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, has about four of the new helicopters, they are replacing the Blackhawk, as an air ambulance, and let me tell you, besides overheating, the space for injured soldiers is very small, cramped and lack of equipment, i heard lots of complaints, from the crew chiefs and pilots, they complained about the overheating and the lack of power, on the engine and the winch, which is located on the upper side of the frame,the Lakota is actually a helicopter designed for the European theater of operations, most likely the western part of Europe, where is cooler. I am glad that finally someone is looking at this very important issue,,, i forgot, the Blackhawks are being shipped to the Sandbox

[jettester]

You know, removing air-conditioning is not like changing the material of the seat covers (a rather simple change). Cooling, especially the kind that is tapped for avionics, is critical and should have been caught before the flight testing phase. If the avionics suite changed drastically over the commercial variant, a full-scale mock-up to test and measure cooling and temperature would have found this out earlier. Or, if the equipment is similar, the Army (or, much better the manufacturer) should have paid to gut a commercial version of its’ air-conditioning to get the temperature impacts way before the flight testing of the production models. The Program Manager for both the contractor and the Army ought to be fired or sweeping the parking lots over this one.

[A.A. Cunningham]

From August:

Eurocopter chopper has serious problems, Pentagon testers say

The same outfit that threw $8 billion down the rathole known as Comanche chose not to buy air conditioning on helicopters that come equipped with air conditioning for commercial operators. Brilliant.

[Doohickey]

Hopefully things have changed since I got out, but ten years ago the ‘60 wasn’t noted for its reliability.

[VOA]

“European-designed helicopters”

Must have hired some “emeritus” engineers that worked on some of
the Renaults of the 1950s-1960s.

I’ll never forget the comments my otherwise very-polite Canadian uncle
would make about the d-mned Renault he owned.
He said he sold it even before he was completely sure that he could
afford to replace it with “a real car”!!!

[org.whodat]

The retrofitting will cost at least $10 million and will come out of the Army's budget, according to the Army.

Hell no it will not, it will come out of the tax payers pocket. They need to fire about half of the army's top offices and replace them with some chimps.

[Drago]

Euro-crap...buy American.
http://www.sikorsky.com/sac/Home/0,9746,CLI1_DIV69_ETI541,00.html
http://www.bellhelicopter.textron.com/en/index.cfm

The new Marine One is European also. Too bad...it is the New World Order I guess.

[BfloGuy]

EADS = Airbus. Surprised I haven’t seen that mentioned.

[Minutemen]

Our buffoon politicians experimenting with little European WEENIECOPTERS? Why? They should be lined up and........

[monkeycard]

Should be buying American.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Screw the eqpt. (Well, sort of...)

104 degrees is an INSANE temperature to allow/require/DEMAND the pilot & co-pilot/air crew fly and work inside!

Put the Congresscritter who required this inside that cockpit fer a little while.

[Wiz]

Buy America! I remember about Duncan Hunter’s proposal on Buy America for military equipment, and some idiot made him step down, if my memory is correct. It’s time once again for our tax money to be spent for American firms that will do a better job.