It is said that there is growing demand in Europe for the Sikorsky CH-53K helicopter at a time of strategic autonomy and no firm procurement commitment on the continent at present.
Lockheed Martin director Frank Crisafulli told Naval Technology in a Q&A session, after a briefing on the subsidiary’s rotorcraft portfolio on 18 June during the Paris Air Show, that “we see Europe as fertile ground” for the heavy-lift platform.
Sikorsky designed the CH-53K, also known as the King Stallion, to specific US Marine Corps standards. In May, a programme manager provided an update on the phased procurement of the helicopter into the service, replacing the legacy E variant. Five squadrons have made the change, which will continue well into the 2030s.
CH-53K can lift payloads weighing up to 36,000 pounds, or three times the capacity of the E variant. Moreover, the design is simpler with 63% fewer parts than its predecessor.
Chinook and King Stallion
When asked about the signal conveyed by the German Air Force decision to purchase 60 CH-47F Block II Chinook helicopters from Boeing as the successor to its legacy CH-53G fleet, Crisafulli, formerly a Marine helicopter pilot, acknowledged the value of the Chinook and the King Stallion, contending there is a market for both of them.
In the US, the Chinook and the King Stallion fly together. “It’s a complimentary capability because the Chinook is in a different weight class than the 53K [while] the 53K is a true heavy lift helicopter, even though people call the Chinook heavy lift.”
Germany’s choice, the CH-47F Block II, can only carry a maximum weight of 27,700 pounds. However, Chinook has more space to transport up to 55 troops.
European requirements
Crisafulli pointed to the CH-53K’s lift, range, speed, fly by wire system, and autonomy attributes as reasons to fill European requirements in the years ahead.
“I think countries are going to be looking for [all this] to do the multi world missions instead of just heavy lift,” he reminded.
“The Marines… designed [CH-53K] to do what we needed it to do, but we found on the international stage that it was well suited for the Special Operations missions, the long range missions, firefighting, and a lot of other things [such as] humanitarian relief.”
While the King Stallion may provide an edge in capability for European military objectives as tensions with Russia continue to grow, it is worth noting that many of these cash-strapped countries are looking for immediate solutions with little cost.
Even though the German Air Force said that both helicopters fulfil the German selection criteria, Germany will receive a larger number of CH-47 airframes compared to the number of CH-53Ks, which indicates their budget focus.
Europe cannot stretch as far as the US Armed Forces as the continent looks to patch up enduring gaps in their military capabilities beyond the heavy-lift rotary requirement. For example, the UK, another European Chinook operator, laid down its ambitions in the recent Strategic Defence Review (SDR) for costly programmes such as the Digital Targetting Web in the next two years.
This particular capability draws on artificial intelligence, a cloud platform, and resilient space-based enablers to function.
In one fell swoop, this will derive a significant portion of the budget which is not expressly accounted for at present. Neither will the government determine a roadmap until the release of the Defence Investment Plan and the Defence Industrial Strategy, which will likely be delayed for several more months when it was due to be released at the end of spring this year.
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