Tuesday, February 22, 2011

UAE to convert its BlackHawks to BattleHawks.

via DefenseNews.

ABU DHABI - The United Arab Emirates is set to turn a number of its Sikorsky Black Hawks into gunships in a deal with the U.S. helicopter maker worth nearly 1 billion Arab Emirate dirhams ($272 million).
The announcement of a plan to buy weaponization kits for 23 of its Black Hawk UH-60M helicopters was the pick of a 4 billion Arab Emirate dirham order bonanza unveiled by the UAE armed forces at the IDEX show Feb. 21 in Abu Dhabi.
 An attack copter that does double duty as a transport?  It took several years but it seems that the US has finally achieved what the Russians did many years ago.  We have our own Mi-24...Columbia has been using a version of this for quite some time too...the only remaining question is whether the US Navy or Army will acquire a few kits.  It would seem a natural for the Navy.  With the focus on littoral combat, these would seem an ideal addition to the fleet.


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