They Need Choppers, Don't They?

By Mark Thompson/Washington

Talk about synergy. The coca-hunting Bell and Sikorsky helicopters that the Clinton Administration wants to ship to Colombia to help wipe out cocaine and heroin just happen to be needed at exactly the same time that U.S. helicopter builders are looking for new customers. It is a neat fit: Colombia and other Latin American nations can use the aircraft; U.S. helicopter builders can use the orders. The Administration's aid package calls for 30 new Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, at $10 million each, and 33 Vietnam-era Bell UH-1 Hueys, outfitted with new engines and other improvements, for $1.5 million each.

The mechanical grasshoppers are ideal for the mission, capable of flitting over rolling jungles at more than 100 m.p.h. They are about the only conveyance possible; roads and airports are scarce, and river travel is slow. Helicopters can survey the rugged Andean terrain for coca and poppy fields, for crude drug-shipping airstrips hacked out of the vegetation and for the labs where the narcotraffickers produce illicit drugs. Armed and armored, the helicopters can protect unarmed crop-dusting planes as they spray lethal herbicides over thousands of acres of coca and poppy plants. And only helicopters can spot outlaw labs and airstrips and then deliver Colombian police and military forces to destroy them. This drug smothering from the air has a credible track record in the region, cutting narcotics production in both Bolivia and Peru over the past decade.

Colombian pilots will travel to Florida to learn to fly the jet-powered, twin-engine Blackhawks, which cost about $1,500 an hour to fly. Crews for the Hueys, which cost only $500 an hour, will be trained in Colombia, whose military has flown Bell birds for years. There is concern in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the U.S. government that sending the more costly and complicated Blackhawks will require Colombia to divert drug-fighting dollars to their maintenance or--more likely--force the U.S. to pick up the tab. "These are the best helicopters in our Army," a U.S. Army officer says, "and keeping them flying takes lots of training, lots of work and lots of money."

Maintenance has long been a bugaboo of such aircraft, especially older ones that have been sold or given to U.S. allies. When Colombia got 12 old Hueys in 1997, for example, each could be flown less than 10 hours before it needed a major required overhaul for continued safe flight. Only two of them were flying two months after their arrival.

Mexico was saddled with a similar problem after it received 73 used Hueys in 1997. With their older, less powerful engines, they struggled to fly in the thinner air above 5,000 ft., where most opium poppies are cultivated. And after one of the Hueys crashed in 1998, killing two crewmen, the Mexicans grounded the fleet. In fact, they never got more than a dozen of the donated choppers airborne at a time. So last September, Mexico returned the Hueys--by truck--to the U.S.

--By Mark Thompson/Washington