US Marine Corps To Reset Sikorsky CH-53E Heavy Lift Helicopter Fleet To Address Systemic Issues

The US Marine Corps is working on full reset of its 147 CH-53E heavy lift helicopter fleet to address systemic issues and to improve the platform readiness of the aircraft.

Issues with the aircraft first came to light following the January 2014 crash of an MH-53E Sea Dragon, the Navy's version of the helicopter, off the coast of Virginia during a training exercise,  Naval Air Systems Command said in a statement Thursday.

Three of the five sailors on board were killed, and the subsequent investigation found that electrical wires had chafed against and breached a fuel line, sparking a fire that flooded the cabin and cockpit with thick smoke, NAVAIR said.

That prompted an inspection of all CH/MH-53s for signs of chafing.

"What was discovered was that the material condition of the aircraft, both the CH-53E and the MH-53E, was degraded," Col. Hank Vanderborght, program manager for the H-53 Heavy Lift Helicopters Program Office at Naval Air Systems Command, said. "Those helicopters have been around since the early 80s, so 30-plus years, and we'd been at war [on terrorism] for the last 15 years, so the machines had been used pretty hard."

The reset will take three years, NAVAIR said.

Every aircraft will be put through an average 110-day process of stripping the aircraft down, rebuilding it and changing out any high-time components.