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The Truth Behind the HMH-463 Tragedy

As you may have heard, two Sikorsky CH-53E helicopters recently crashed offshore of Haleiwa Hawaii. They were on a routine nighttime training mission and failed to check in with their unit HMH-463, on Marine Corps Base Hawaii, around 2300 on Jan 14th 2015. What you may not know is the hidden realities behind this tragic event. The Coast Guard initially said that the two helicopters may have collided and that was widely reported but the Marine Corps later said that they were not sure if that was the cause of the accident.

The first thing that struck me a little odd were the witness recounts of what happened. One woman said that she saw a flare and then heard two loud booms that shook the ground. Another man said that he saw a huge fireball as the choppers went down. Now this is just speculation from my past aviation experience but if the two had collided over water there would not be two distinct explosions and a huge fireball. Also helicopters do not usually use flares or chaff in an emergency situation such as that.

The other odd thing was that they did not issue a mayday call, meaning that either did not have time to react or were preoccupied with the situation at hand. This too is not something that would likely happen during an emergency situation such as this, which they train for regularly. It was then that I realized the helicopters would release chaff if targeted by an incoming missile. The helicopters were only a few miles off shore and a MANPAD (Man Portable Air Defense System) could be fired from a boat.

I came to the conclusion that the two distinct explosions were from incoming guided rockets, fired from either a MANPAD or a surface to air missile system. The chaff would have been released to deter the missiles and because they were training in friendly waters they were not expecting to encounter such a situation. The other thing I found odd was that the coast guard found an empty life raft inflated where they first found the debris. There was no one in it and they later found three more empty life rafts. They also did not find any bodies or survivors after four days of searching. This makes the boat launched missiles more likely because the assailants could have gathered the crew and any survivors after they destroyed the helicopters.

Then I got to thinking who would have anything to gain from such an incident? If it were terrorists they would have already claimed responsibility for the attack. If it were another foreign government they would have targeted something with more value and higher value targets. It didn't make any sense, that was until I started researching more about the CH-53E. This helicopter is old and has been due an upgrade for a while. It turns out that Sikorsky has already been developing that replacement, the CH-53K. They are still bidding for the Marine Corps final contract and funding for it, the program has been delayed already a few times costing the company millions.

In November Lockheed Martin, who is no stranger to its own corruption and questionable strategies, bought Sikorsky from United Technologies Corp. The government was already very weary about this deal because they felt as if Lockheed Martin would have a monopoly in the defense contractor category. Lockheed Martin wasn't the only one who benefit from the loss of these helicopters, Sikorsky and even the Marine Corps would benefit in a few ways.

In 2010 the Marine Corps agreed to a plan and requested 200 helicopters, even as they pushed its initial flight back to FY 2013, and IOC back to FY 2018. The actual first flight was not completed until 2014 and IOC pushed back another year. The program wasn’t experiencing problems, and no reasons were given, beyond statements concerning the program’s aggressive schedule. This created a number of risks for the Marine Corps.