Australia has announced it will ditch its fleet of European-designed Taipan military helicopters a decade earlier than scheduled, replacing them with 40 Black Hawk choppers from the United States at an estimated cost of 2.8 billion Australian dollars ($1.97bn).US manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp’s UH-60M Black Hawks will replace Australia’s fleet of MRH-90 Taipan helicopters, which have been plagued for years by costly maintenance issues, Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Wednesday.“We’ve just not got the flying hours out of the Taipan that we would need,” Marles told ABC News. “We’re confident that we can get that from the Black Hawks. It’s a platform we’re familiar with.”
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