Army ‘Premature’ in Rejecting Possible Copter Crash Cause, Report Says

The Army appears to have “prematurely” ruled out the possibility that radio wave interference can cause its new UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter to crash, the Pentagon’s inspector general said Wednesday.

The inspector general, in a long-awaited 25-page report, said laboratory and field testing had established that high levels of electromagnetic energy--such as radio or radar transmissions--can affect the flight control systems of the Blackhawk.

The question, the Pentagon’s independent auditor continued, is whether such radio interference can become severe enough to cause one of the choppers to crash.

The Army “has determined that electromagnetic interference is not a safety of flight issue,” the inspector general noted. “But the Army Safety Center seems to have taken a different position.

‘Not Ruled Out’

“It stated that while electromagnetic interference has not been demonstrated to be a safety of flight issue, it has not been definitively ruled out. . . . We agree with the position of the Army Safety Center that test data available to date are not sufficiently conclusive. . . .

“A negative safety of flight determination . . . has been made prematurely.”

The audit report also went on to criticize the Army’s handling of the problem, disclosing:

--Army investigators have never identified electromagnetic interference “as a cause of, or even a contributing factor in, any accident in the aircraft reviewed.”

--The Army has been slow in addressing the Blackhawk’s problems with radio interference and is now pursuing a questionable approach to solving the matter.

Most of the testing to date has involved only simulated conditions, and the Army appears to be planning assembly line improvements that would address only those problems that have cropped up to date.

“Thus, the Army appears to be concentrating on the symptom and ignoring the illness,” the auditors wrote. “Testing has not been sufficient or timely.”

--The Army could have obtained detailed technical and cost information on what it takes to harden the Blackhawk’s systems against radio interference from the Navy two years ago--but failed to do so.

The Navy, which uses a variant known as the SH-60 Seahawk, has specified a level of protection against interference that is 10 times greater than the Army’s, the auditors said.

The release of the inspector general’s report comes just a week after the Army announced that it was accelerating plans to shield one key control system of the Blackhawk against interference.

Conclusions Disputed

Maj. Phil Soucy, an Army spokesman, said the service intended to study the new report closely but he disputed some of the report’s conclusions.

“The report implies that we have been suppressing recommendations from the safety center,” Soucy said.

“Our approach to this has been anything but cavalier. The director of the safety center has supported our approach, and we have moved as expeditiously as the evidence allowed. And any suggestion the Army is placing dollars in front of safety is a gross error.”

The Blackhawk is a twin-engine, single-rotor helicopter that is replacing the aging UH-1 “Huey” copters of the Vietnam era as the Army’s primary air assault and air cavalry craft.

Last November, Knight-Ridder Newspapers reported investigators were convinced that radio wave interference had caused five Blackhawk accidents since 1982, killing 22 servicemen. The Army and the aircraft’s maker, the Sikorsky Aircraft unit of the United Technologies Corp., denied that report.