Photo By Sgt. Thomas Day | SOUTHWEST ASIA (13 Sept., 2006)---A V-3 Vertex Aerospace team prepares a 101st...... read more read more
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by Sgt. Thomas L. Day
Desert voice Staff Writer
40th Public Affairs Detachment
For the USARCENT Soldiers charged with supporting the deployment and redeployment of helicopters in and out of theater, work can be fast or slow but never in between.
This fall is one of the fast times.
Two 101st Airborne Division "Screaming Eagles" aviation brigades have started collecting their helicopters at the Sea Port of Debarkation, landing side by side to be prepared for movement. More units will follow in their tracks in the coming months.
"All this takes place in something called, 'The Surge,'" said aviation operations officer Lt. Col. Aquiles Ramirez. He said they have continually been working near their maximum density.
"In the month of August, between deployment and redeployment units, we had 200 aircrafts (a day)," said Ramirez.
The 101st sea movement operation, according to Capt. Kenric Smith of the 6-101st Aviation Regiment, will continue throughout through September. That will include the division's arsenal of UH-60 Blackhawk, AH-64 Apache, CH-47 Chinook and OH-58D Kiowa helicopters.
The process includes folding rotors and tied together, the antennas are removed and the aircrafts are sprayed with a corrosion prevention compound.
"The basic thing is to get them as small as possible, so they can fit through the ship," Smith said.
For the Screaming Eagles, this redeployment follows lessons learned from the previous redeployment. Following the 101st's 2003-2004 Iraq tour, the redeployment process included "shrink wrapping" the helicopters in plastic to protect them from rusting. That practice was scrapped, according to Smith, after it became apparent that the wrapping only served to collect sea water condensation inside the plastic, thus causing more rusting than would have been incurred without the cover.
Without the shrink wrapping, the process of preparing the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters now takes less than 45 minutes he said, and most of the work is provided by the civilian-contracted, Mississippi-based L-3 Aerospace Vertex Corporation, as well as ARCENT personnel in the area.
| Date Taken: | 09.13.2006 |
| Date Posted: | 09.15.2006 13:48 |
| Story ID: | 7750 |
| Location: |
| Web Views: | 203 |
| Downloads: | 52 |
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