What do you do if you have dozens of combat helicopters you don’t want? If you’re the Australian government, you dismantle them and turn them into landfill. That’s the imminent fate of 45 Australian Army and Royal Australian Navy MRH-90 Taipan helicopters, grounded since a crash in Queensland last summer and withdrawn from service.
Australia has had something of a troubled history with its European-UK designed MEH-90s, the Taipan being an adaptation of the NH-90 type currently in service with a number of Nato countries. Severe procurement and operating cost blowouts, mechanical failures, high maintenance costs, difficulty in obtaining spare parts, and several whole-fleet groundings have plagued the aircraft. Australian military authorities were also disappointed with the helicopter’s operational fitness for purpose, particularly their capacity for carrying sufficient fully-laden combat troops, was another black mark against the Taipan.
There was one taker for the decommissioned Taipans, willing to take them despite safety fears: Ukraine
The final straw came last July when one crashed into the sea off the Great Barrier Reef while on exercise, killing all on board.
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