Israel Air Force Launches Upgrades for Heavy Helicopters


By BARBARA OPALL-ROME
TEL AVIV — In its most extensive upgrade program in more than a decade, the Israel Air Force is about to launch its own serial production of a self-designed, indigenously equipped version of the U.S.-built CH-53 heavy-lift helicopter.

The Yasour 2025 program aims to keep the nearly 40-year-old Sikorsky Yasour (Clearwater) fleet flying front-line missions through 2025. In interviews here, Air Force and industry sources said the entire program from engineering and prototype design to production, integration and operational testing — is being conducted in-house by Air Force active duty and reserve forces.
“We’re prime contractor and lead integrator for this project. Everything from A to Z is being done within the Air Force,” program manager Maj. Avichai Socher said.
The first prototype of the upgraded CH-53 was presented to service brass on Nov. 1, six months ahead of schedule, Socher said. Later this month, the service will begin flight testing the first prototype while, in parallel, serial production will be launched at the Air Force’s Depot Center at Tel Nof Air Base south of Tel Aviv.
In a Nov. 11 interview, Socher said more than a dozen locally developed technologies and subsystems were selected for the new block-model CH-53s, all of which will be integrated by the in-house Yasour 2025 team.
In addition to equipment provided by local industry, the team developed its own avionics architecture to integrate new gear into existing systems. It also rewired the aircraft’s electrical power system to support the new configuration, and developed an automatic hovering system that enables it to maintain a position over water in extreme dust or other conditions where crews lack visual reference points.
“Practically, it’s a new helicopter capable of performing multiple missions much more effectively,” Socher said. “It’s more survivable, much easier to maintain, and we expect that after all the upgrades are complete, to increase reliability by several percentage points.”
The service program manager declined to provide detailed program costs, but estimated the entire upgrade effort, which began in June 2005 and is scheduled to conclude at the end of 2010, at “dozens of millions” of dollars. He also declined to speculate on how much money the service saved through in-house design, integration and production. He noted, however, that the last time the Air Force upgraded its Yasour fleet during the 1980s, the service hired a local aerospace firm to perform work now implemented by the in-house team.
Socher said the entire Yasour 2025 team numbers fewer than 20, mostly young engineers doing their mandatory service and a few more experienced professionals from the Air Force Reserves.
“We made a personal commitment to remain within budget and on schedule, and I’m particularly proud that so far, we’ve exceeded our goals,” Socher said. He noted that since mid-2005, the in-house team has invested “tens of thousands of man hours” in the first phase of engineering design.
Priority on Force Protection
At the heart of the ambitious upgrade effort are Air Force requirements to increase the survivability of its heavy utility fleet.
At the end of Israel’s summer 2006 Lebanon War, a Hizbollah-launched missile struck a Yasour, killing all crew members aboard. The helicopters also were involved in the nation’s worst military aviation disaster: the 1997 midair collision of two CH-53s on a training mission that killed 73.
So the service is installing two separate self-protection systems; a new electronic warfare suite; and several new products promising improved situational awareness, flight management, and command and control.
The upgraded Yasours will feature the EL/M-2160 by Israel Aerospace Industries’ Elta Systems subsidiary, a militarized version of the firm’s Flight Guard protection for civilian airliners. It detects incoming missiles with radar and activates countermeasures to divert them.
The second self-protection system warns crews of approaching obstacles such as electrical cables, errant aircraft, rock formations and other terrain. Developed by Elbit Electro-Optics Elop, the Surveillance Warning Obstacle Ranging & Display (Sword) system features a high-speed, eye-safe beam-scanning laser radar and Inertial Navigation System/Global Positioning System receiver to digitally map obstacles approaching within 100 degrees of the cockpit.
Dan Slasky, director of Elop’s laser systems business unit, said the Sword solution is now much more than the high-end collision-avoidance laser radar the firm began developing in the late 1990s. In recent years, Elop upgraded the safety system to allow more extensive operation in perilous terrain.
“Now our system allows for a significant expansion of the operational envelope. Helicopters that were not allowed to fly, for example, in deep ravines can now operate in that kind of terrain,” Slasky said.
In a Nov. 14 interview, the Elop executive said Sword’s scanning radar offers a very large, 100-degree field of regard.
“That means that even before the helicopter starts accelerating into a turn, the system already sees approaching dangers on his periphery. Crews get the same visual and voice warning signals from peripheral threats as they do for the cables and other obstacles looming right in front of them,” he said.
Elbit also is supplying its Aviator’s Night Vision Imaging heads-up display system. In the coming weeks, the Air Force also plans to contract with Elbit for the Yasour 2025’s mission computer, an essential new system that was not integrated into the first prototype, defense and industry sources say.
Other improvements include the Airborne Digital Audio Management System (ADAMS) by Netanya, Israel-based Orbit Technology Group, and the Total Health & Usage Management system by RSL Electronics, an aerospace diagnostics specialty firm based in Israel’s Galilee region.
Orbit spokeswoman Meirav Kavallsky-Brami said the firm’s ADAMS will handleall communications: multiple radios, intercom, navigation signals, alerts, recorders and public announcements.
Air Force Work Horse
Since the U.S.-built CH-53s arrived in October 1969, the heavy utility helicopters have been deployed on a variety of missions, including deliveries of special operations troops and supplies, electronic jamming, and search-and-rescue operations.
In a recent book on service capabilities, aerospace analyst Dani Shalom noted that in December 1969 — less than two months after their initial acceptance — the Yasours were deployed on their first special mission to remove a fire control radar from Egyptian territory. In the past four decades, Air Force CH-53s supported nearly all Israeli military campaigns, from Lebanon and the
Golan Heights to deep in Sinai

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3186435&C=airwar