This post was going to be a little look back at the CH-54 and compare its cargo pod to the standardized shipping containers of today and to look at how it could be used to expedite the movement of specific, pre-loaded cargo from the sea base to the shore.
THINK DEFENSE is a big fan of the containers and has written extensively on the movement once they reach shore...but he doesn't cover the movement of these containers by air.
But then it dawned on me. A madman by the name of Mike Sparks once had an idea to remove the body from the CH-53E and basically add elongated landing gear making a modern day, but more powerful CH-54.
The guy was super anti-Marine Corps and I tossed his idea because of that.
In hindsight, he might have been on to something. I've spent time on the way back machine trying to find the particular article but gave up since my time for researching this is short. Suffice it to say that the crazy idea of making a "new" CH-54 based on the more powerful CH-53E (or even better the CH-53K) might have merit.
I don't know how much weight you would lose if you removed the troop cabin from the airframe but I would bet money that it wouldn't be much of an engineering challenge and would allow for the magical 30,000 pound threshold to at least become semi-reachable
So here's to you Mike Sparks...where ever you are. You're a madman. You're crazy. And I believe you were ahead of your time.
The site to look for is Combatreform.org and the term for these containers is "battlebox". Here is the battlebox article and the CH-53E SkyCrane concept is about half way down.
ReplyDeletethats it exactly! thanks!
ReplyDeleteBoieng started dev on a Chinook based Skycrane. It was cancelled before the first one was complete. It was to lift over 20 tons and still carry 12 troops in the slender fusalage.
ReplyDelete