The United Arab Emirates will be able to reinforce their fleet of heavy helicopters Boeing Chinook with the decision of the U.S. Department of Defense to authorize the sale of ten additional copies.
Only after the Congress approval we will be able to know the schedule of deliveries of the ten additional Boeing Chinook heavy helicopters that will receive the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates. The latter already operate a fleet of twenty copies. Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt are the other countries in the region to deploy the Boeing Chinook. For Saudi Arabia the number varies depending on the sources whereas the inventories of the two other countries show Egypt has a fleet of twenty helicopters and Iran has forties of them. Israel chose the Sikorsky CH-53 Stallion with more than 20 copies indicated. In this “heavyweight” category, the CH-53 (19 tonnes maximum on take-off) and the Boeing Chinook (more than 22 tonnes) have no competition. In the category below, that of 11 tons, the Airbus H225 (just over 11 tons) and the NH90 (just under 11 tons) were chosen by Kuwait (30 copies) for the first, Qatar (28) and the Sultanate of Oman (20) for the second.