The Bundeswehr has contracted with Rheinmetall to look after, maintain and repair Germany’s Sikorsky CH-53G transport helicopters at two additional bases.
Starting in March 2022, the company has been supporting the German Air Force at Laupheim in Baden-Württemberg and Holzdorf-Schönewalde on the border of Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg, conducting pre-flight inspections and operating a total of three service bays for partial work phases at the 64th Helicopter Squadron. Worth a figure in the lower two-digit million-euro range, the contract with Rheinmetall Aviation Services GmbH runs for three years in two lots. Rheinmetall has been maintaining CH-53G helicopters on behalf of the German Air Force ever since November 2020. As planned, the company took over maintenance operations at Diepholz Air Base in Lower Saxony in March 2021.
The 64th Helicopter Squadron is stationed in Laupheim where, together with its air transport group at Holzdorf-Schönewalde, it operates 66 CH-53G helicopters, an aircraft which has been in the Bundeswehr inventory since 1972. In all cases, the work Rheinmetall carries out is directly embedded in the structures of the 64th Helicopter Squadron.
Overcoming rival bids in a request for tenders, the Düsseldorf-based integrated technology group’s subsidiary Rheinmetall Aviation Services GmbH (RAS) will now be carrying out maintenance operations at Laupheim and Holzdorf-Schönewalde.
Source: Rheinmetall news release
