Bell Gets Navy Contract for 25 New Helos

According to Defense Industry Daily

Mar 15, 2016 00:20 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff

The US Navy has awarded Bell Helicopters a $461 million contract to supply the force with 12 Lot 13 UH-1Y and 16 Lot 13 AH-1Z helicopters. The contract includes the provision of 16 auxiliary fuel kits. Completion of the sale is expected by February 2019 as part of the Navy’s H-1 upgrade program. Bell Helicopters has also signed a teaming agreement with BAE Systems Australia to offer the AH-1Z as a potential replacment for the Australian Army’s Tiger fleet.

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AH-1Z helicopters: HEREah-1z-viper

UH-1Y helicopters

The UH-1Y Venom was developed from the previous UH-1N Twin Huey, introduced in the early 1970s. Extremely successful, versatile and reliable airframe of the UH-1 was integrated with modern avionics and new propulsion. It uses a lot of off-the-shelf technology. It has a high degree of commonality with the AH-1Z Viper, which was developed under the same program. Even though these air vehicles serve to totally different missions. Viper is premier attack helicopter while Venom is utility transport chopper. However they share 85% of replaceable components. These helicopters share engines, rotor system, transmission, tail boom, avionics, controls and displays and other components. Such commonality allowed to reduce production, maintenance and overall operational costs.

Entered service 2009
Crew 2 men
Dimensions and weight
Length 17.78 m
Main rotor diameter 14.88 m
Height 4.5 m
Weight (empty) 5.37 t
Weight (maximum take off) 8.39 t
Engines and performance
Engines 2 x General Electric T700-GE-401C turboshafts
Engine power 2 x 1 800 hp
Maximum speed 286 km/h
Cruising speed 248 km
Service ceiling 6.1 km
Ferry range ?
Combat radius 241 km
Payload
Passengers 8
Payload capacity 3 t
Armament
Machine guns 2 x 12.7-mm or 7.62-mm
Other 70-mm unguided rockets

Source military-today.com

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