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Military

Sikorsky's Combat Rescue Helicopter heads for production

By David Szondy
September 26, 2019
Sikorsky's Combat Rescue Helicopter heads for production
The Sikorsky Combat Rescue Helicopter
The Sikorsky Combat Rescue Helicopter will perform critical combat search and rescue and personnel recovery operations for all U.S. military services
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The Sikorsky Combat Rescue Helicopter
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The Sikorsky Combat Rescue Helicopter will perform critical combat search and rescue and personnel recovery operations for all U.S. military services

The Sikorsky HH-60W Combat Rescue Helicopter (CRH) has been cleared by the US Air Force for initial production. The successor to the Sikorsky HH-60G Pave Black Hawk will now have its fleet of nine test airframes expanded to the first tranche of 113 production helicopters.

The HH-60W first took to the skies on May 2019 at the start of an intensive program of performance and load testing at the Sikorsky Development Flight Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. After 150 hours of envelope expansion flights, the helicopter has been given the green light to go into limited production.

An artist's rendering of the HH-60W
An artist's rendering of the HH-60W

Currently, there are five HH-60Ws under construction at Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky's Stratford facility. It's designed as a dedicated combat rescue helicopter with greater range, speed, and payload space than is predecessor. It has reconfigurable seating, double the fuel capacity of the UH-60M Black Hawk, improved survivability and cybersecurity, a combat flight radius of 195 nm (224 mi, 361 km), and can hover at 4,000 ft (1,220 m) at 95° F (35° C).

The video below shows the HH-60W in flight.

Sikorsky Combat Rescue Helicopter's newest milestone: four in the air

Source: Lockheed Martin

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MilitaryLockheed MartinSikorskyHelicopter
2 comments
David Szondy
David Szondy
David Szondy is a playwright, author and journalist based in Seattle, Washington. A retired field archaeologist and university lecturer, he has a background in the history of science, technology, and medicine with a particular emphasis on aerospace, military, and cybernetic subjects. In addition, he is the author of four award-winning plays, a novel, reviews, and a plethora of scholarly works ranging from industrial archaeology to law. David has worked as a feature writer for many international magazines and has been a feature writer for New Atlas since 2011.

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2 comments
darkcook
Cruise speed? Hover at 4,000 feet is in or out-of-ground effect?
ljaques
We've had one (some?) of those flying over Grants Pass recently, maybe from Kingsley Field toward the ocean. They are huge and you can hear them coming for several miles. BIG BOYS!