The MI-24 crash: Was it a case of poor judgement?

For six days, a regional force of Kenya and Uganda troops combed the slopes of Mount Kenya in search of bodies or survivors of the three MI-24 helicopters that crashed on Sunday, August 11. The four helicopters were en route to war-torn Somalia. Rescue teams on Thursday found the final wreckage of the third chopper; meaning that only one of the four helicopters that took off from Soroti Flying School on Sunday reached its destination.

Seven air force officers died in the crash, while 21 soldiers were rescued. The helicopters were headed for the last battlefield of Kismayo, the stronghold of the al-Shabaab insurgents.

The plan was for Uganda to provide air power while Kenya and Somalia forces attack on ground. Information indicates that the African Union had planned to attack the base next week. Analysts now say the loss of the three helicopters before they reached the battlefield is a huge setback, not only for Uganda, which has spent five years battling the insurgents but also the African Union plan to defeat the al-Shabaab.

Questions are now being asked at to what may have gone wrong.
Uganda has got a grimy record with helicopters. The most prominent being the 2005 helicopter crash that killed southern Sudan leader John Garang. Uganda has also been accused and condemned by both local and the international community of purchasing junk helicopters. The three ill-fated MI-24 helicopters were purchased in 2003 and the MI-17 in 1999. According to Strategic Intelligence News, most of the MI-24s were unserviceable, but later the government contracted Russian experts to refurbish them at Soroti Flying School. MI-24 planes are being used by more than 30 countries in military operations.

What went wrong?
So, what might have gone wrong in the case of the Sunday crash? Was it bad weather? The “Shaitan Arba” (Satan’s Chariot)” as the Afghan rebels called the MI-24 has been disadvantaged most by its limited deployment capabilities in terms of time of day and weather conditions.
Army spokesperson Felix Kulayigye told Daily Monitor on Tuesday that “We are aware that it was the weather that brought problems, nothing else!” 

A report by the Russian pilots, who used the Mi-24 during the Afghan war, say inadequate on-board navigation systems and poor radar, limited the use of the helicopter in adverse weather and at night.

According to Russian battle reports, technical shortcomings of on-board radar and navigation forced the Russians to employ MI-24 helicopters mostly during the day and fair weather when visibility exceeded 1.5 kilometers and pilots could get a clear look at their targets. Col. Gen. Pavlov, the commander of Russian Army Aviation, says these rules meant that 95 per cent of days in February 1995 were listed as “non-flying days.”

The US Centennial of Flight Commission, points in documents that cockpit visibility for the early Hinds was extremely bad, forcing Mil to redesign the cockpit so both the pilot and WSO sat under individual bubble canopies.

This gave the Hind a prehistoric appearance. Over the next several years, more modifications were made, such as replacing the nose-mounted machine gun with a cannon and adding sensors. Still, by Western standards, the Hind has a poor set of navigation and electronics instruments.

The Americans narrate that during one incident in the early 1980s, an American AH-1G Cobra was flying along the East German border when a Hind was ordered to intercept it. The two helicopters played a game of chase along the border, with the US pilot constantly pulling into a sharp climb to force his faster opponent to overshoot him.

Eventually the Hind pilot pulled back too hard and his aircraft started to tumble. He pushed his aircraft into a dive in order to recover, with the intention of pulling back sharply before hitting the ground. When he pulled back hard on his stick, the main rotor blades struck the tail-boom of the Hind and the helicopter crashed, killing all aboard. This problem—the Hind’s tendency to damage itself catastrophically when the rotors hit the tail-boom—has long plagued the aircraft.

Was it high Altitude?
It was in Afghanistan, where the MI-24 became most notable. Much of Afghanistan is a mountainous desert, and the helicopter was the best means of putting troops into rebel Mujaheddin controlled areas. Hinds often rode shotgun to provide support or were later used to attack ground targets.
Given their successful operations in high altitude areas in Afghanistan, some aviation experts dispel the notion that the helicopters that were flying in sequence over Mt. Kenya could have crashed due to high altitude.

However while the planes fly up to an altitude of 5,000 meters, Mt. Kenya, Africa’s second highest mountain, stands at 5,199 meters above sea-level. This means that an Mi-24 pilot cannot fly over the mountain and would have to go round it, according to Kenya Aviation website. The website goes on to say the helicopter that arrived in Garissa, MI-17, can reportedly fly as high as 6,000 metres.

Unforgiving
According to Dwayne Allen Day, a senior programme officer for the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board of National Academy of Sciences, the MI-24 is not easily maneuverable, making it a problem when flying at high speed close to the ground. “The Hind is a difficult and unforgiving helicopter to fly. Unless a pilot is very careful, he can cause it to fly out of control or cause the rotors to collide with the tail-boom,” writes Dwayne in the US Centennial of Flight Commission.

“Although the Hind is fast, it is not very maneuverable, and this is a problem when flying at high speed close to the ground. In addition, a fully loaded Hind cannot hover and has to make a rolling take off. The Hind’s performance suffered in the hot, thin air of Afghanistan,” he added.

According to Military Aviation experts, the helicopter has never been a complete success. It has rarely been used in the role for which it was intended, as a flying infantry fighting vehicle. They point that it is unnecessarily large and heavy for use as a gunship and has never possessed the tank-killing power of the US AH-64 Apache. Its biggest drawback is its lack of night vision and precision navigation equipment. And according to sources, the Ugandan team only had a hand-held mobile phone, which one of the pilots used to communicate to officials on the ground. They also did not have any night vision as they were expected to land in Somalia by 6:30pm.

Was it a case of inexperience pilots?
This, the Ugandan army rubbished right away. The pilots who perished in the crash were trained in Russia, US and South Africa. According to relatives and the army records, Capt. William Letti has been one of the most experienced pilots in the Ugandan Air Force and the best Uganda had in flying the MI-24. His flying experience spans to more than 25 years, while that of Lt. Patrick Nahamya is eight years.

According to State Minister for Defence Gen. Jeje Odongo, the pilots sent to execute the plan had previously successfully executed operations in northern Ugandan, Sudan and the DR Congo. “The crew underwent UN training and they all passed the competence tests,” Gen. Odongo told Daily Monitor.

Was it a technical problem?
On the airworthiness of the helicopter, the minister maintain that the UN experts as well as Russian and Uganda Air force engineers had separately cleared the helicopters for the battle after ascertaining their airworthiness, reducing the possibility of technical mid-air malfunction.
Kenya Aviation doubts that three aircrafts can develop technical faults at the same time and in the same locality.

“In aviation terms, the accident would be described as ‘Controlled Flight into Terrain,’ where an aircraft crashes into an obstacle while under the control of a pilot or autopilot,” it stated. Such accidents, Kenya Aviation said happen due to poor visibility or because of the pilot’s unfamiliarity with the terrain. Raised areas, such as Mt. Kenya, can be enveloped by clouds in a very short time, leaving a pilot disoriented.

So, was the crash a result of lack of good judgement? Although senior officials from Uganda and Kenya say the flight routes were well planned with clear arrangements for fueling the helicopters because they could not fly to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, directly, less is said about the communication.

Sources indicate that the team depended on a single mobile phone device of one of the pilots. Also questions are being raised on the effectiveness of Uganda’s radar system, which broke down five years ago.

The existing radar that has served for 10 year was only temporarily fixed in 2007, in preparation for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting but has since failed to work. The lack of effective radar, experts say, could have hampered proper reading of the weather.
A request made by the Meteorology Department for Shs7.9 million in 2010 to buy a modern unit is still pending.

If the planning team knew that the weather was a big component in the planning, what precaution did they take? And why was the route change to fly over Mt. Kenya, which is 5,019 metres above sea level, higher than the maximum attitude climb of an MI-24. Uganda and Kenyan military counterparts say in a press statement that the route was agreed upon and well planned.

Col. Kulayigye says there was proper planning and monitoring of the weather pattern but “weather on the mountain changes anytime and this was beyond our control.” On communication equipment, he said, “Aircrafts communicate with each other, air control and control tower but the weather changes any minute.”

The Kenya Wildlife Authority officials say the weather on Mt. Kenya changes quickly in the course of the day, and it can be a nightmare for those flying around the mountain. The biggest undoing perhaps could have been the decision to fly in a formation, like it is usually done in battles rather than disperse manner.