The CSAR Circus

Published



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The Chinook assists fire fighters in
New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Two weeks ago Boeing held a conference call with reporters to discuss “why they believe the HH-47 will be selected again,” as the Air Force recompetes the CSAR-X competition that was overturned last fall by the GAO. Our regular readers will by now be familiar with the basic outline of the story (those who aren’t can click here to read more), but the long and short of it is that the Boeing HH-47 was considered a long-shot to win, owing to concerns about downwash, transportability, brownout, acoustic signature, footprint, and a number of other perceived shortcomings. To Boeing’s credit, the Chinook has some ardent defenders who write us with great frequency whenever we knock the aircraft as a viable CSAR platform…take this comment we got last time we posted on the subject (name withheld):

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