Lithuania’s Air Force will have to wait longer for the first two of four UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters purchased from the United States in a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreement.
The medium-size utility rotorcraft were originally due to arrive in late 2024, but now it is hoped they will enter service at the end of this year, followed by the last two units sometime in 2026.
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The Baltic nation, which has the largest defence budget of the three neighbour states according to GlobalData intelligence, is inching ever closer to a five-year waiting time.
During the Helicopter Technology Central and Eastern Europe conference on 22 May in Prague, Czech Republic, Airforce Technology learned from Lieutenant Colonel Andrius Stuknys, chief of headquarters engineering service, Lithuanian Air Force, that the service is cultivating a new support system for the platforms from experience derived from people and organisations in Europe and the United States.
Cooperation is ongoing with the governments of Poland, Latvia, Slovakia as well as Sikorsky, the original equipment manufacturer; the Helicopter Alliance; and the Pennsylvania Army National Guard (PANG), a long-time user of the Black Hawk.
It is understood that Lithuania has sent ten pilots and 18 technicians to get to grips with the American-made Black Hawk throughout 2023 and 2024.
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By GlobalDataTraining with PA National Guard
“So we saw how the FMS was running. We saw some some dark spots in the FMS, and we took advantage of the full course [offered by the] Pennsylvania guys,” said Stuknys.
The PANG provide Lithuanian personnel training strategies, sustainment support planning and execution, and partnership exchange events that provide hands-on and observation of the Black Hawk maintenance process.
This collaboration has been ongoing for eight years, a PANG spokesperson told Airforce Technology.
These Lessons are based on more than 30 years’ experience operating Black Hawk within the PANG in different environments, including overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The service has conducted more than 8,500 hours of flight training annually, primarily out of Muir Army Heliport at Fort Indiantown Gap, which is the second busiest heliport in the US Army.
The PANG have more than 45 Black Hawks for both its mission to instruct US and allied military pilots and its mission to deploy operational aviation units, including the UH-60L/M/V model aircraft.
Black Hawk user group in Europe
Like many Central and Eastern European countries, Lithuania still operate a range of Soviet legacy helicopters, including the Mi-8 utility helicopters, some of which the nation had donated to Ukraine. This adds some urgency to Lithuania’s modern rotorcraft requirement.
Nevertheless, the Black Hawk selection aligns the Baltic nation with many other regional militaries shedding their Russian Mil helicopters for Black Hawks including Croatia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.
In that spirit, the Helicopter Alliance – a holding company that formed in 2023, comprising entities across the Czech Rpeublic, Slovakia and the US – plan to acquire between 40-60 legacy Black Hawks that have been divested from the US Army for European use.
The business will modernise and customise the units at ACE Aeronautics, a leading company in the group, at its facility in Guntersville, Alabama – all while supporting the training of their personnel and maintenance of the rotorcraft for the rest of their life cycle, which will likely operate until 2070.
Having only purchased four new Black Hawks form the US government, Lithuania has scope for many more units to be acquired thorough the Helicopter Alliance, cheaper and more quickly than the slow route of Foreign Military Sales that Lithuania are currently pursuing.
