HUR published a video showing its special forces soldiers training on the UH-60A Black Hawk machine on Sunday, the defence24.pl website reported.
The first reports about HUR’s use of a US Black Hawk appeared several months ago, and the agency confirmed them in February, posting photos of the helicopter, according to defence24.pl.
Now HUR has released a video of the Black Hawk, news outlets reported.
The video shows HUR soldiers practicing battlefield landing, evacuation, landing from airborne ropes and night flights, according to Ukraine’s mil.in.ua website.
Tasked with military-intelligence duties, the HUR agency has its own special forces which carry out reconnaissance and subversion missions behind the frontline, among other tasks, according to defence24.pl.
The HUR’s special forces use the US helicopter in its missions and the Black Hawk is "taking an active part" in combat operations, mil.in.ua reported.
Ukrainian pilots master Black Hawk helicopter ‘in a matter of hours’
Ukrainian crews mastered the Black Hawk in “just a few hours,” partly thanks to their experience with Soviet-era Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters, according to the website.
“Having experience operating the Mi-8 and Mi-24, we could fly the Black Hawk on the first day we received it,” a HUR pilot said, as quoted by mil.in.ua.
The HUR soldiers also said that the US helicopter was “much more manoeuvrable than the Mi-8,” as well as “much easier to handle,” and with “a higher horizontal flight speed,” defence24.pl reported.
The first pilot on HUR’s Black Hawk said: “Over the past year, the level of our pilots has enormously improved. Currently, Ukraine can easily accept about a hundred Black Hawk multirole helicopters, about 50 Apache attack helicopters, and about 40-60 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters. We could accept this amount with minimal time for retraining our pilots.”
The HUR’s Black Hawk had been transferred to Ukraine by US avionics company Ace Aeronautics, which bought the machine a few years earlier from US Army stocks, defence24.pl reported.
The UH-60A Black Hawk multirole helicopter
The UH-60A Black Hawk is a multirole helicopter developed by American company Sikorsky Aircraft.
It is designed to fire both guided and unguided Hellfire missiles and is used to support infantry and transport cargo, according to mil.in.ua.
The Black Hawk can stay in continuous flight for about three hours and is capable of covering a distance of over 600 km, the Ukrainian website reported.
Monday is day 418 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: defence24.pl, mil.in.ua, gur.gov.ua
