King Stallion heavy lift program on track for 2019, say Marines.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

When a deadly earthquake struck Nepal in April, the Marine Corps fleet of CH-53E Super Stallion heavy lift helicopters remained behind. Scheduled to have wiring work done, they did not make it to the disaster zone.

And that was too bad, said Lt. Gen. Jon M. Davis, Marine Corps deputy commandant of aviation. "It would have been the perfect aircraft for that kind of mission," he said during a speech on Capitol Hill.

The Echo-models of the Marine Corps' primary heavy lift helicopter are aging, and routine work to keep them flying must be done as the service awaits the new CH-53K King Stallion, which is scheduled to enter the force in 2019.

"We have been flying the heck out of the aircraft and it's performing very well for us," Davis said. "But we have to have that [new] airplane. The 53-Echo won't last so long."

In order to fight in two major conflicts simultaneously, the Marine Corps has a requirement to maintain 220 CH-53 heavy lift helicopters. The production line for the Sikorsky-built aircraft went cold in the mid-1990s. During the last 30 years, about 50 of them have crashed leaving the Marines and Navy with 178, according to H-53 Program Manager Col. Hank Vanderborght. Twenty-eight of them are MH-53E Sea Dragons used by the Navy for mine-sweeping missions.

"Every time we crash an aircraft we have a decrease in capability," he said in an interview. "We've been taking a risk inside the Marine Corps for quite some time."

Both Davis and Vanderborght said the King Stallion is on track to reach initial operational capability in 2019 even if Budget Control Act defense cuts return in 2016. "Right now, we don't anticipate that it will have much of an impact on the program," Vanderborght said.

The program of record calls for 200 King Stallions, which will be built by Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.

However, the Echo model will remain in the fleet until about 2032, Vanderborght said. That means keeping it flying and relevant for another 17 years even though it is based on 1970s technology.

The "53-Echo is at this point in its life is probably at the inflection point where reliability is starting to go down because it has been around since the early 80s," he said. The Marines are currently replacing wiring that is becoming brittle. This is a common and anticipated problem for aging marine aircraft, he said.

The Navy's MH-53 Sea Dragon should have all that work completed by December. In 2014, a Sea Dragon crashed off the Virginia coast and killed three crew...