MALABAR '09

An older post from Late April / early May. It's just been sitting in que, never having had the finishing touches put onto it. (Sorry for the delay!)

One of the many interesting (and often forgotten) aspects of being on a naval helicopter crew is that we are very probably the only people in the Navy who get to visit every type and class of ship in the inventory with regular occasion.


Take a typical F-18 pilot for example; he gets to spend plenty of time on the carrier, but never gets any closer to any of the other ships except for when he's zooming over them at mach 3 with his hair on fire. An even better example would be the land based E6-B and P-3 aircrews, many of whom have served full careers in the Navy without ever having once stepped foot onto a ship...



On a daily basis helicopters visit destroyers, frigates, cruisers, carriers, amphibs, et cetera-ad nauseum and never really think twice about it. Now the interesting part of this equation is that we also make landings on foreign ships with regualr occasion, making us the only part of the US Military who regularly land on the sovereign territory of other nations. On top of having landed on almost every type and class of ship in the US Navy, I've made landings on ships of the Japanese, German (which I guess is already a given quality), French, Belgian, and United Arab Emerites navies. Our recent participation in MALABAR '09 provided the opportunity to add India to that list as well. (What can I say? I'm trying to collect them all).

...Not that I really "geek-out" on ships or anything -- I could personally care less, (which is why I point out that it's often forgotten). The "varsity factor" here is that most of these countries have very different landing procedures and practices which require the pilots to not only posess a good working knowledge of the basic operational differences, but moreover require them to frenquently press the "I believe" button, and excercise some critical judgement while operating the US taxpayer's multi-million dollar helicopter in an environment that might not exactly meet the typical OSHA safety standards you're accustomed to. ...Which is very polite way of saying "relaxing your sense of self-preservation and 'going with the flow' while simultaneously not letting the crazy bastards cause you to crash the helicopter or get someone killed".

...So without further adieu, a few airborne pics from Exercise MALABAR'09, including contingents from the US, Japanese and Indian navies. I think that the submarine pictured below was the only vessel in the exercise that we didn't actually land on!