The KUH-1 Surion Helicopter for the Philippines?

A KUH-1 Surion Helicopter. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Near the end of the official three (3) day State Visit of President Rodrigo Duterte to South Korea in June 2018, he visited the aircraft manufacturer Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) where he was shown the KUH-1 Surion Helicopter. Duterte also got to ride the aircraft for around five minutes and was reportedly impressed by it, but left it to the Technical Working Group (TWG) of the Philippine Air Force to review the proposed acquisition of the aircraft.^{1 2}

Other government officials later added more details about the possible acquisition, with Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Delfin Lorenzana putting the number to be purchased to be as low as eight (8) while National Security Adviser (NSA) Hermogenes Esperon Jr. putting it to be as high as twelve (12).³ With this, let us take a closer look at the Surion.

Surion Helicopter Problems up to July 2018

A menacing front view of a KUH-1 Surion helicopter of the Republice of Korea Army. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

I decided to break this off from another blog about the KUH-1 Surion helicopter I was writing because I thought that it was getting too long and I was presenting too much information already to comfortably read in one sitting. With this blog, I will be discussing the problems that were publicly revealed about the aircraft up to the time of writing.

’Problems, Problems, Problems’^{1 2}
The first of the number of problems that the Surion has encountered over the years were the Cracks that were found on the left side of the aircraft near the Vibration Absorption Devices and on the Windshields as first reported by the South Korean media in May 2016.