S-67 Blackhawk: When the Blackhawk was an attack chopper
Alex Hollings | March 15, 2021
Sikorsky’s H-60 series of Black Hawk helicopters have become legendary for their prowess on the battlefield, but almost a decade before the first UH-60 entered service, Sikorsky had a different sort of Blackhawk in mind: The S-67 attack helicopter.
One year before the United States entered the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army solicited proposals for the Advanced Aerial Fire Support System (AAFSS) program, which aimed to be the first program in history to design a helicopter from the ground up for armed military action. By February of 1965, the Army awarded contracts to both Lockheed and Sikorsky for further development on their respective designs, with Sikorsky fielding an entrant they called the S-66, and Lockheed submitting their own CL-840 Cheyenne. Ultimately, Lockheed’s proposal would win out and secure a developmental contract for 10 of their combat helicopters, only to have the program unceremoniously scrapped in 1969 after Lockheed had failed to make satisfactory progress addressing a number of technical issues within Cheyenne.
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