Proven reliability
Having first entered service with the Marine Corps in 1981 and having reached the million flying hours milestone in July 2019, the CH-53E Super Stallion is still the backbone of the USMC’s helicopter transport fleet with currently around 140 aircraft in service. Over the years, airframe and avionics have been drastically refined. The CH-53E can take up to 32 passengers, and this can be expanded to 55 when the centerline seats are fitted. In the medical-evacuation (medevac) configuration, the aircraft can take 24 litters and two seats or six litters with 20 seats. In the transport configuration, the cargo bay can fit six 48” x 48” pallets; two, two-seat MRZRs (a light utility task vehicle); or one four-seat MRZR. Externally, the CH-53E can lift 36,000 pounds either on the dual-point hook or on a single hook.
To protect forces in the rotorcraft and on the ground, the CH-53E can be fitted with three .50-caliber GAU-21 rapid- fire machine guns, one on each side and one on the loading ramp. Furthermore, the airframe can be fitted with a ballistic protection system featuring armored plates containing a mix of Kevlar and steel to protect the helicopter against bullets and blast fragments. To identify threats, the crew has the AN/ APR-39(V)1 Radar Warning Receiver (RWR), the AN/AAR- 47(V)2 Missile and Laser Warning System, the AN/AAQ-24 Directional Infrared Countermeasure and the AN/ALE-47 Airborne Countermeasures Dispenser System (CMDS) at its disposal. To improve the workload of the aircrew, and to enhance the interoperability with units on the ground and in the air, the avionics suite was drastically modernized to include GPS navigation, Head-Up Displays (HUD), Anvis 9 night vision goggles, three AN/ARC-210(V) Radio Communications Systems, DAMA (Demand Assigned Multiple Access) SatCom, and the AN/AAQ-29A forward looking infrared (FLIR) imaging system.
“The CH-53E is a great helicopter, and it does what it is designed for,” Shawhan says. “It helps that it has three engines as well. It provides a lot of power and a lot of torque. It is a very big helicopter and the frame can handle a lot of loads. Furthermore, I think that the survivability is excellent due to the wide range of self-protection systems it has. We also have a HUD attachment that will go on the goggles. We can put certain flight data into the system that gives us some hovering data and drift information, rate of climb, rate of descent, and our heading. We can also declutter it by turning off those individual systems on our HUDs.”
THE BEST WAY TO MOVE SKID TYPE HELICOPTERS
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