By Geoff Fein
The first deployment of the MH-60R was quite successful and provided the carrier strike group (CSG) commander with more helicopter assets at his disposal, according to a Navy official.
HSM-71, the first fleet MH-60R squadron to complete its maiden deployment, returned in July, Capt. Donald Williamson, commodore of the Helicopter Maritime Strike Wing, U.S. Pacific Command Fleet commander, told reporters during a teleconference last week.
HSM-71 deployed with 11 aircraft while its sister squadron, the MH-60S from Helicopter Sea Combat Wing, deployed with eight helicopters.
“It was quite an increase in helicopter capability for the admiral charged with executing the operational mission for that carrier strike group,” Williamson said. “From my perspective it provided that carrier strike group commander with a lot more helicopter assets at his disposal. Having 19 in the strike group provided a lot more flexibility with a lot more assets to respond to real world tasking in a more rapid pace.”
While the helicopter strike group increased in size from 12 to 19, each of the new MH-60R and S aircraft brought with it increased capability over the existing platforms, Capt. Jeffrey Dodge, HSM-71 commanding officer, told reporters.
“Our focus as a MH-60R squadron was in the area of sea control, so primarily anti-surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare. Our sister squadron, HSC-8, handled logistics and had a supporting role in defense of the strike group against small boat threats. They also took over all the special warfare missions–insertion and extraction and combat search and rescue.”
With that increase in aircraft, the strike group saw a greater ability to provide helicopter support for those mission areas as well as a much more robust capability against some of the real world threats such as asymmetric attack and attacks from small boats, Dodge added.
The challenge in this first deployment was operating units that could be separated by large geographic areas, Dodge said.
“Traditionally, each detachment on a cruiser or destroyer would have its own chain of command and its own reporting responsibilities,” he said. “Working all of them through the carrier did prove to be an organizational challenge, but it also showed that by accepting that challenge and overcoming it you could provide much more effective and integrated support to the strike group as a whole.”
During the deployment, HSM-71 flew more than 4,600 flight hours, 37 percent of which were at night, with a 99 percent sortie completion rate, Williamson said. “Clearly, we have some more shaking out of the sensors to do, and we are, quite frankly, still learning.”
The next MH-60 R and S wings, HSM-77 and HSC-2, are in transition now. HSM-77 just received its fourth helicopter and when they are ready to deploy to the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) CSG early next year, they will have a full complement of 11 helicopters.
“The concept is, they will get the Block III armed helicopter so that as each carrier strike group does their transition they get eight armed S and 11 Rs aircraft as part of the helicopter [concept of operations] transition,” he said.
Although the MH-60R is equipped with many of the same systems as its predecessors (sonobouys, dipping sonar, radar), integration of all of the systems led to some new tactics that operators have been able to employ, Dodge said. And the integration of Link 16 and the Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS) provided greater situational awareness in each helicopter.
During the deployment, the MH-60R and S operated as a hunter-killer team, where the 60R would use its sensors to obtain situational awareness in the battle space and then have the 60S come in and take out any small threats, Dodge added.
“That also showed in strike group defense, or working in the littorals or more constrained battle space, where again we could be a command and control platform…use our sensors to gain awareness, put eyes on the target, ID it as hostile or neutral and vector in the S or a jet to either warn it away or take action,” Dodge said.
And the addition of Link 16 enabled the two MH-60 squadrons to work as one team, Williamson added.
One thing that the HSM-71 crew noticed early on in their deployment was the change in quickly moving from an environment where aircrews only talked to ships, and the ships would then communicate to the other aircraft and the admiral or the destroyer squadron commander would make the decision about what would be done about a particular contact, Dodge said.
“We got into the role where we were talking directly to other aircraft because of our enhanced communications suites and greater situational awareness, to the point where we started looking at a mini forward air controller airborne-type syllabus for some of our pilots to get better understanding of how to talk to a F-18 and get them to find a target out there,” he added. “We saw some real growth and new development in that vein of being out there, taking on some of that E-2-ish command and control, taking on some of that target handoff stuff and being much more involved with a lot more players while we are out on station.”