Government confirms troubled helicopters won’t fly again
Australia's Taipan helicopters will no longer be flown by the army, with the government confirming the fleet will be retired 15 months early. Defence will instead scramble to speed up the delivery of new Blackhawks from the United States following a fatal crash in the Whitsundays earlier this year.
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TVTranscript
00:00 The Defence Force and Government have lost confidence in the Taipan airframe.
00:08 It's had a number of difficulties over recent years, in fact even decades since Australia
00:13 first acquired these European-designed helicopters in the final days of the Howard Government.
00:21 But today there has been confirmation of what has already been a widely held view in the
00:27 Army and that is that the Taipans would not fly again in Australia and that's following
00:33 the devastating crash that occurred off the Whitsundays back in July in which four Army
00:39 personnel lost their lives.
00:41 That was a training accident during Exercise Talisman Sabre.
00:46 But this does leave a looming capability gap.
00:49 Australia had been hoping to retire the Taipan fleet from the end of next year.
00:55 Every Army has been getting some of these aircraft out of the fleet but there will still
01:02 have to be a big gap before the new Blackhawks fully arrive from the United States.
01:08 Only three have arrived so far.
01:11 In any case, the Defence Minister Richard Miles did have to concede that there was a
01:15 big looming capability gap for the Army's aviation capability when he spoke to the ABC
01:22 this morning.
01:23 There is a challenge here and there's no gilding the lily on that and that was really apparent
01:30 from the moment that we made the decision to not fly the Taipans in the immediate aftermath
01:36 of this tragedy.
01:39 So since then we've been working really hard to look at how we can deal with capability
01:44 issues over the course of really the next day or less than that now, the next 15 months.
01:51 And we do think that by making this decision we are able to move faster down the track
01:57 of getting Blackhawks into operation quicker.
02:00 That is actually at the heart of the decision that we're making today.
02:04 But there will be capability challenges that we face over the course of this next year
02:09 and a bit.
02:10 And Andrew, what's been the reaction to this move?
02:13 Well, mostly positive.
02:16 Certainly from a political point of view the opposition is backing it.
02:20 But there are others that have the view that the Taipan is a very, very capable aircraft.
02:26 In fact, has more features and more advantages than the Blackhawk, which is an older model
02:34 that Australia will now be getting instead.
02:37 In the past the Taipan has also served Australia well during Black Saturday bushfires, or the
02:44 bushfires of a few years ago when there was a huge need for the Defence Force to help
02:51 respond.
02:53 And now without that capability people are pointing out that this will be a problem this
02:59 year as the forecasts are for another hot summer.
03:02 Let's hear from former Defence official Marcus Hellyer who describes just what the problem
03:09 is going to be for the Defence Force in coming months.
03:13 We have a looming capability gap as the bushfire season approaches.
03:18 We're retiring a fleet of over 40 helicopters that can be used for firefighting and at the
03:23 moment we only have three new Blackhawk helicopters to replace them.
03:28 So with a catastrophic fire season on the horizon and indeed one that has started already
03:33 in some places, we need to find a way to get more firefighting helicopters under contract
03:40 and into service as soon as possible.
03:43 Dr Marcus Hellyer speaking there today and it has to also be pointed out, Joe, that around
03:49 the world other militaries have had a lot more success at operating their Taipan or
03:55 their MRH90 helicopters.
03:58 Even in New Zealand it has managed to have much better flying hours and therefore a lot
04:03 cheaper for New Zealand to operate its much smaller fleet.
04:08 But in Australia, given the constant groundings and the problems, the flying hours for the
04:13 Taipan have been just so high.
04:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]