The Coast Guard MRR Jayhawk is based on the Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk and Seahawk helicopters of the U.S. Army and Navy. Coast Guard plans for an MRR helicopter to replace the HH-3F coincided with a Navy requirement for a new strike rescue and special warfare support helicopter based on the sub-hunting SH-60F. Simultaneous development and production of the Navy HH-60H and Coast Guard MRR
promised savings. Coast Guard officials signed the contract Sept. 29, 1986, and the first HH-60J Jayhawk with weather radar and other Coast Guard equipment was delivered in March 1990.
With external fuel, the 22,000-pound Jayhawk has up to 7 hours endurance. On the night of Oct. 28, 1991, an Elizabeth City HH-60J aircrew commanded by Lt. Paul Lange flew into Hurricane Grace responding to a distress call from the sailing vessel Anne Kristina about 300 nautical miles east of Cape Henry, Virginia. The Jayhawk crew refueled on the aircraft carrier USS America conducting sea trials 100 nautical miles
offshore and arrived on the rescue scene to execute an automatic precision approach-to-coupled hover. They located the sinking schooner with night vision goggles, dropped a rescue swimmer into 40-foot seas, and hovered in 60-knot winds and driving rain to hoist nine sailors from the Atlantic. The Jayhawk returned to USS America with 13 people aboard.
An MH-60 Jayhawk painted in vintage Coast Guard yellow lowers a rescue basket during training off Washington state in July 2018. The service has 38 MH-60T models in service and seven in programmed depot maintenance today. The most recent MH-60T update gave the Jayhawk digital avionics and night vision electro-optics.
Sikorsky delivered the last of 42 new HH-60Js to the Coast Guard in 1996. In PDM, Jayhawks acquired night visionics, health and usage monitoring systems, and other improvements. Aging airframes, obsolescent avionics, and the armed AUF mission after 9/11 led the ALC at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to rebuild the HH-60J fleet to MH-60T standards with digital “glass” cockpits and the Common Avionics Architecture System.
On Oct. 29, 2012, during Superstorm Sandy, an MH-60T piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Steven Cerveny rescued sailors from the sinking HMS Bounty replica. The aircrew flew in darkness, 60-knot winds, and driving rain to execute an instrument descent to the debris field of the ship. The rescue swimmer was deployed in gale force winds and 30-foot seas to hoist one survivor. The helicopter crew found the remaining survivors in two life rafts and rescued four more sailors. Forced to withdraw with low fuel, they positioned another Jayhawk to recover the remaining nine survivors.
The Coast Guard completed MH-60T upgrades in August 2016 and now has 38 Tango models in service and seven in PDM. In addition to extending the service life of the MH-60, the Coast Guard plans to acquire up to 60 Navy SH-60Fs for Tango-model conversions. Both the MH-60T and MH-65E are expected in service until the mid-2030s, and according to Brimblecom, “As these aircraft only continue to get older, we are constantly looking at ways to extend them as long as we can to get as much as we can out of them.” He added, “Our current fleet of helicopters is being upgraded and given a service life extension to extend them as long as we can as the military studies and looks into the next generation of helicopters. Future vertical lift is a joint program with all the services that will hopefully define the next era of vertical-lift flight.”