Boeing CH-47 Chinook MH-47G

Before there were purpose-built special operations Chinooks, US Army special operations aviation relied on 12 CH-47Cs modified for night-vision-goggle flying. Taken from the 101st Airborne Division, they joined Task Force 158 - the forerunner of the later 160th regiment - in 1980 and entered active service in 1981, fitted with radar altimeters, long-range navigation and communication gear and internal auxiliary tanks. In 1983 they were joined by 16 CH-47Ds with improved navigation, satellite communications and electronic warfare equipment. The first dedicated models followed: the MH-47D, with aerial refuelling and a fast-rope system, and the MH-47E, with more fuel and terrain-following/terrain-avoidance radar. Together with standard CH-47Ds they made up the Army's active H-47 fleet through the 1990s.

In the late 1990s work began on a common successor. The plan was to use the CH-47F's technology - remanufactured airframes, lower vibration, integrated digital avionics with a digital map, and more powerful Honeywell engines - as the foundation of a modernisation programme that would bring the MH-47D and MH-47E to one standard, the MH-47G. The sources record an initial aim of converting 25 MH-47Es and 11 MH-47Ds by the end of 2003. The new model had to combine every function of the MH-47E and MH-47D: mission management, aircraft performance, multi-mode radar, digital map and survivability equipment control. It gained a second embedded GPS/inertial navigator, replacing an obsolete heading reference, and the ability to receive and display near-real-time intelligence.

On 6 May 2004 Army special operations forces received their first MH-47G at a rollout ceremony at Boeing's Ridley Park site in Pennsylvania. The same year, the first CH-47F lot showed how closely the two programmes were tied: of its seven aircraft, the first was a CH-47F for flight demonstrations and the other six were MH-47Gs, due by March 2005. To meet urgent operational needs, Boeing was then to remanufacture some thirty more G-model Chinooks before the next CH-47F was delivered in 2006. In 2007 the Ridley Park plant delivered 36 Chinooks of various types, four of them MH-47Gs.

Rising demand pushed the planned total upwards. The sources speak of a requirement for at least 61 aircraft - a figure the Army gave on 11 May 2011 - mixing remanufactured and new airframes; one of them states that 9 MH-47Ds, 18 MH-47Es and 35 CH-47Ds were turned into MH-47Gs. Contracts to remanufacture H-47s to the MH-47G configuration followed one another between 2007 and 2009, one of them converting three MH-47Es into extra airframes. The final MH-47G of the modernisation programme was delivered to US Army Special Operations Command on 10 February 2011. The Army later accepted its first new-build MH-47G, and in 2014 eight new aircraft derived from the CH-47F were ordered.

Outwardly the MH-47G resembles the MH-47E, but its avionics are far more advanced. At their heart is the Rockwell Collins Common Avionics Architecture System (CAAS), a night-vision-compatible glass cockpit that became the basis of the CH-47F cockpit and was also planned for the UH-60M and MH-60M. It brings communications, navigation, the forward-looking infrared sensor and the multi-mode radar together on five multifunction displays and two control units. The aircraft also incorporates all of the new airframe sections of the CH-47F.

Power comes from T55-GA-714A engines with infrared exhaust suppressors. The helicopter keeps the enlarged internal tanks and refuelling probe and adds a rescue hoist, an electro-optical system able to designate targets for laser-guided weapons, missile and laser warning, and flare dispensers. For low-level flight in poor visibility, Raytheon was contracted to develop the Silent Knight multi-mode terrain-following radar, with the MH-47G as lead platform. Armament consists of two M134 Miniguns and two M240 machine guns, all of 7.62 mm. The crew numbers five: pilot, co-pilot and three further crew members.

The MH-47G serves only with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and is used for infiltration and extraction of special forces, resupply, forward refuelling and as a command-and-control platform. Experience in Afghanistan convinced the regiment that the MH-47 was a very effective replacement for the MH-60 Black Hawk as an assault helicopter, which drove demand sharply upwards. For the raid on Bin Laden four MH-47Gs left Jalalabad: two waited on the Afghan side of the border with a quick reaction force, while two entered Pakistan, one carrying fuel for the MH-60s and the other as a spare - which was needed when one of the Black Hawks crashed.

In December 2007 Boeing flew an MH-47G on a series of demonstration flights for the Air Force at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, as a functional stand-in for its HH-47 candidate in the CSAR-X combat search and rescue competition. The MH-47G-based HH-47 had won that contest on 9 November 2006, but the award was protested, re-bid and eventually cancelled; the Air Force chose the HH-60W instead.

The Army decided to restart production with a Block II design that could replace some or all of the first-block MH-47G fleet. On 1 September 2020 Boeing announced the on-time delivery, from its Philadelphia plant, of the first MH-47G Block II, with a contract for 23 more signed that July; the stated overall requirement was 69. Block II combines the CH-47F Block II improvements with aerial refuelling, a full defensive aids suite, forward-looking infrared and multi-mode terrain-following radar. According to one source, 69 MH-47Gs were in service in 2018, joined by 4 Block II aircraft ordered that year and 6 more in 2019.

The United States does not export the type. The British Ministry of Defence confirmed talks about the MH-47G in 2017, and on 19 October 2018 Congress was notified of a possible sale to the UK of 16 extended-range H-47s.