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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Several U.S. Army aviators had the opportunity to work with members of the Royal Jordanian air force at a base outside of Amman, Jordan, July 12.

The RJAF recently added the newest model of the Black Hawk helicopter – the UH-60M – to their fleet and spent the past week reviewing its capabilities during both classroom and hands-on training.

Jordanian 1st Lt. Alaa Al Bawaleez, a maintenance officer with the RJAF, showed interest in learning about the new systems. He noted that there was a lot to learn about this new aircraft, especially when it came to the changes in avionics, which are a considerable upgrade over the previous Alpha model of Black Hawks.

“I’m new working with this aircraft,” said Al Bawaleez, “so everything about it is new for me.”

U.S. Army Capt. Robert Taylor, executive officer and production control officer for Bravo Company, 449th Aviation Support Battalion, Texas Army National Guard, explained that the focus of the subject matter information exchange was on things like maintenance structure, production control and quality control.

“This discussion started out at a high level,” said Taylor. “It covered a lot of specifics on maintenance for both the Alpha model and the Mike model, to include avionics (the electronic systems used on the aircraft), tracking balance of the aircraft, pre-flight checks and human factors classes.”

Taylor said that while there are many similarities between the original Alpha model and the new Mike model, there are also substantial differences between the two that pilots and maintenance officers need to understand.

“The Alpha model is a much more simplistic aircraft,” said Taylor. “If you had a problem you could just swap a part. Now you’re dealing with a computer system that you’ve got to figure out. Is it a wire? Is it something within the computer? Is it some other component that feeds the computer?”

Al Bawaleez said that understanding troubleshooting for the new aircraft was one of the most valuable parts of the information exchange.
“We had some issues with the Alpha model,” said Al Bawaleez. “So when we transferred to this model, we asked if there are similar problems, and what the solutions are.”

Near the end of the week, both the 449th ASB and the RJAF expressed interest in partnering together again for future engagement opportunities.

“The best part has been getting to know the people here and getting a better understanding about what they do,” said Taylor. “Figuring out how one thing they do matches up with what we do so that we can figure out what areas we can help with – it’s just about making those connections.”

*Dvids