Navy wants to harvest retired Japanese helos for parts

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http://hamptonroads.com/2014/09/navy-wants-harvest-retired-japanese-helos-parts



Capt. Todd Flannery speaks on the Sea Dragon helicopter crash in January at Norfolk Naval Station, Sept. 11, 2014.

Navy wants to harvest retired Japanese helos for parts
By Mike Hixenbaugh
The Virginian-Pilot
© September 16, 2014

It's unusual for the United States - by far the biggest defense spender in the world - to seek scrapped military equipment from other nations. Typically, those roles are reversed.

But for the past several years, according to internal emails obtained by The Virginian-Pilot, the U.S. Navy has been negotiating to acquire Japan's retired fleet of MH-53E Sea Dragons. The Navy wants to harvest the old helicopters for parts to help keep its own Sea Dragons flying until 2025.

"It's telling when we are put in a position where we need to buy scrapped aircraft to keep ours going," said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent think tank in Washington. "For the most part, we're buying the most recent generation of equipment and discarding the last generation. And many of our global partners and allies are still using them, so they'll gladly take them off our hands."

Japan is the only other country that bought Sea Dragons back when Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. was building the mine-clearing helicopters for the U.S. Navy in the 1980s. Unlike the United States, Japan decided to retire and replace its fleet last decade as the aircraft approached the end of their planned service life.