Rotor Review Articles
It is my distinct pleasure to thank Lt. Ash Preston for his tremendous efforts as Rotor Review’s Editor-in-Chief over the past year and wish him “fair winds and following seas” as he heads off to his disassociated tour.
Whereas Ash is out to sea, I have the good fortune of being a land lubber for the next year or so and have stepped up to fill the editor-in-chief position. I have been involved with Rotor Review as the HSM community editor for the past year and am looking forward to continuing my work with the NHA staff and members as editor-in-chief.
The theme for this issue is #EverydayNHA, which ties in well with the upcoming Training Wing Five Gulf Coast Fleet Fly-In. Held October 27-30 at NAS Whiting Field in Pensacola, Fla. the Fleet Fly-In provides the perfect opportunity to pull back the curtain and give future unrestricted naval aviators a glimpse into what it is that we helicopter pilots do each day. Every pilot knows it’s not all gun shooting and torpedo launching and that some days are more like groundhog day than Top Gun, but, as you will see from the NHA photo and video contest entries in this issue, we get to do some pretty neat things! With a vast range of missions represented, to include search and rescue, vertical replenishment, anti-submarine warfare, humanitarian assistance, surface warfare and logistics, it is obvious that naval helicopter aviation is alive and well and that we are prepared to respond to our nation’s call at a moment’s notice. The pride and enthusiasm we have for our profession is clear and will undoubtedly be enthusiastically shared with the next generation of pilots at the upcoming Fleet Fly-In!
You will notice a slightly different editorial style used in this issue of Rotor Review. We have changed our editing style to conform with the Navy Style Guide which follows the Associated Press (AP) stylebook. AP style is used by Navy NewsStand and Navy.mil as well as by many other professional publications such as newspapers and magazines. The reason for the transition is to shift away from an internal, military writing style and align ourselves with the style used by the military for public release. Ultimately, the goal is to make Rotor Review easier to read and facilitate reprints of our articles in other media sources. I hope you find our new style more reader friendly and standardized with the majority of other print media you also read.
As always, the Rotor Review staff welcomes all feedback and suggestions for improvement. I hope you enjoy reading RR130 and I look forward to seeing you at the Fleet Fly-In!

 

LT Emily Lapp, USN
Editor-in-Chief
Rotor Review

 

On the heels of the 2015 NHA Symposium, this summer’s Rotor Review issue brings the joint operations of today’s Naval Helicopter Community to your fingertips. This issue’s Focus, “Joint Environment: Afloat and Ashore”, highlights the Naval Helicopter operations happening now across the world. It seems that our service has been saying things like “joint is the future” for a decade or more, and our community is at the forefront of just that.

    Operation GREEN FLAG is one of the most well-known training exercises in our community. LT Adam Beauregard’s recount of this year’s operation proves the extreme forward-leaning nature our community’s MH-60R and MH-60S helicopters, specifically how they are vital to restricted waters transit threats, and our joint forces’ training to defend the high value unit.

    HSM-73’s participation in FIFTH Fleet’s semi-annual SHAMAL exercise is another great example of the integration our helicopter fleet is proving in the community. The Battle Cats of HSM-73 trained with one of the most lethal helicopters known to rotary wing aviation, the AH-64D Apache. LTJG Sturgill’s Focus article highlights the excitement of the two-day SHAMAL exercise, including the joint live-fire and oil terminal defense training events.

    Our editorial staff is also proud to include an article with an international twist as part of this issue’s Focus section, after receiving LCpl Fatmeh Saad’s retelling of VMM-261’s MV-22 Osprey interoperability tests aboard the Royal Netherlands Navy warship Karel Doorman. Plus, that awesome cover designed by NHA’s Design Editor, George Hopson, serves as a perfect intro to LT Mark Trask’s BORTAC article, which tells just how hard our Navy-Coast Guard team is working in the Border Protection mission.

    As always, our Feature section is packed full of great content, including highlights of important safety changes following a deadly Osprey crash, the future of NVDs used across our community, and the uncovering of a well-known but unfixed challenge to MH-60R Seahawk crews (and probably most helicopter variants): barometric altimeter error.

    Thanks for reading the aforementioned articles and all of the other content included in this Summer’s issue.  We hope you enjoy it!

 

LT Ash Preston, USN
Editor-in-Chief
Rotor Review

 

Welcome to this Spring’s double-issue of Rotor Review!  This issue is packed with great content that serves as a fitting lead-in to this year’s Symposium. Each year, the NHA Symposium offers many events that provide an in-depth snapshot of the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard rotary wing community. I am confident this double-issue will peak your interest in some of these events on the Symposium’s agenda.

For starters, LT Jason Aldridge and LT Bryan Criger, from HSC-6, provide great insight into the challenges and successes of the first helicopter detachment on board an Independence class Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The Symposium’s LCS Panel will continue the discussion of how the helicopter community is and will continue to integrate with the LCSs in the fleet.

Maj Ryan Schiller puts the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II on display as he writes about the lethality, precision, and cost-effectiveness of this relatively new weapon system. The article is sure to excite its readers for this year’s lethality-focused Symposium.

LT Ryan Yonkman from HSC-2 provides a captivating story of the fatal MH-53E crash off the coast of Virginia in January 2014. His story describes his experience from the driver’s seat of one of the SAR mission’s many rescue helicopters, and serves as a stepping stone for the Symposium’s SAR Hotwash discussion. This event will not only present lessons learned from this SAR mission’s operations cell, but it will also tell the story of other challenging and dynamic rescues our community is conducting.

These three examples are just a few of the many great submissions our editorial staff received this quarter.

Keep the great content flowing! I hope you enjoy this edition of Rotor Review and this year’s NHA Symposium.

LT Ash Preston, USN
Editor-in-Chief
Rotor Review

 
RR127 Editor’s Log
Monday, January 12, 2015 03:00 AM

Rotor Review issue 127 focuses on a mission that is shared amongst all Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine helicopters: Search and Rescue.  As helo bubbas, we know the SAR mission well.  From  our beginnings in flight training over Blackwater Bay, during the Rescue Swimmer School in Pensacola, or at the Aviation Technical Training Center in Elizabeth City, we studied and trained the SAR mission.  Continuing into our specific platforms, any aviator quickly recognizes that regardless of the other mission sets that define our specific capabilities, any helicopter can become a search asset.   Plus, if it is equipped with a hoist and a hoist operator, its crew can pluck a survivor out of the water.  Since we share this common mission across the community, it was no surprise that after announcing the SAR focus for this issue, the editors welcomed a flood of exciting content from all reaches of the community.

Our Coast Guard and Navy Station SAR commands shine as they offer terrific recaps of recent rescues.  Their stories tell of exciting rescues in areas often unseen by the Navy and Marine Corps fleet communities, such as Lake Michigan and the Yosemite areas.

In addition this issue’s Focus section, you will find some great articles showcasing how the community’s is at the leading edge of naval aviation.  The Navy’s HSM and HSC communities are both working hard to expand their capabilities and relevancies in the fleet.  In our Feature section, you will learn how HSM-71 led the testing efforts for the MH-60R’s employment of the APKWS, a rocket-based weapons system that is new to Navy helicopters.  Plus, as a Command Update, the Spartans of HSM-70 explain the improvements they have made to Navy helicopters’ relevance in the Carrier Air Wing.  

The Navy’s HSC community is polishing the MH-60S’s expanded mission sets to maximize many of the platform’s capabilities.  In the Feature section, HSC-25’s article reviews its involvement in FORAGER FURY II and HSC-9 tag-teams lessons learned with its sister squadron, HSM-70, to offer an insight into improvements in their interoperability within CVW-8.

Finally, the Marines of VMM-364 provide an historical command update in this issue.  The Purple Foxes flew the CH-46E Sea Knight (A.K.A. The Phrog) into retirement, lying to rest a platform that has been in service since the Vietnam War.  HMH-462 also submitted a great recap of some overland external logistics training.

I hope you enjoy the issue.  Keep the content flowing!

LT Ash Preston, USN
Editor-in-Chief
Rotor Review

 
RR126 Editor’s Log
Monday, October 27, 2014 12:00 AM

Greetings from the Editor’s chair!  I hope you all enjoy Rotor Review issue 126.  Serving as Editor-in-Chief for this issue was truly rewarding for me.  The issue’s content highlights just how much our community continues to evolve into an interconnected network of DOD and interagency partnerships.  Any Rotor Review issue is filled with great updates from the “happenings” of the fleet.  This one, though, also shares just how much the missions of Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard helicopters have grown to involve our partner agencies and branches.  These growing partnerships excite me as a helo bubba for a few reasons. 

First, my fellow rotor heads in the fleet are gaining awesome experiences as pilots and aircrewmen.  I am extremely envious and happy for them.  Monotony is never a good thing nor is it enjoyable.  So, teaming up with a new agency or service to conduct training or operations is a fresh, challenging, and a rewarding experience for those involved.  Second, despite already being masters of our equipment and our missions, new and exciting ways to employ our toys and skillsets challenge us as individuals, crews, and as a community.  I think this type of challenge makes us better, since it is always good to break out of our “comfort zone.”  Lastly, these types of missions show off our technology to new audiences.  The H-60’s Multi-Spectral Targeting System (MTS), for instance, has now been employed, by HSC-8, to test the tracking of a simulated NASA Crew Module entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and high altitude.  This groundbreaking mission (estimated for December 2014) really showcases the naval helicopter community’s high skill level to outside agencies like NASA.

Until next time, enjoy this issue and all of the great content shared by our members.

So long,
LT Ash Preston, USN
Editor-in-Chief
Rotor Review

 
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