Belgium plans to retire NH90 TTH, SF260 and B-Hunter UAV

摘要

IN LATE June it was revealed that the Belgian Air Component plans to significantly reduce flying hours allocated to its four NH90 Tactical Transport Helicopters (TTH). Currently, it's considered there are too few aircraft to operate them efficiently and that keeping the crews qualified is prohibitively expensive. The helicopters reportedly require much more maintenance than anticipated, compounded by a shortage of skilled technicians and what the defence ministry describes as flawed industrial support (more specifically, problems with deliveries of spares). The current cost per flying hour is around €10,000 - more than for an F-16. Providing the high number of flying hours required to keep crews qualified on different tasks has not been possible due to low availability rate. During its career, the NH90 TTH has only deployed once in an operational environment - when two helicopters were based in Mali for six months in early 2018. Around 150 flying hours were completed during this mission.