SHELBYVILLE, Ind. (WRTV) — Indiana National Guard leaders on Thursday said a new helicopter hangar will mean better readiness and maintenance for their helicopter fleet.
The National Guard hangar at Shelbyville Municipal Airport is home to half of the Indiana National Guard's 20 Black Hawk helicopters. When it was built in the early 1970s, the Army was still using the smaller UH-1 Iroquois, better known as the Huey and best known for its service during the Vietnam War.
Maj. Gen. Larry Muennich, the Indiana National Guard's adjutant general and a longtime Black Hawk pilot, said the Guard has been asking for a new hangar ever since it first began flying Black Hawks in 1996.
"Many of the leaders around me were talking about the need for a new flight facility at the time," he said. "It just is a difficult thing to get the funding for and to compete for. So for over 30 years, we have talked about and competed to try and upgrade the flight facility here in Shelbyville, and it looks like we finally will be able to do that, and I'm extremely excited."
Congressman Jefferson Shreve, R-Indiana, whose district includes Shelby County, said he has secured a $27.5 million grant for a new maintenance hangar. The money is part of a military construction bill that has already passed the full U.S. House. He said the money will help improve the Guard's ability to respond to disasters both in Indiana and around the country.
Shreve said the Shelbyville armory supports about 900 personnel, of whom 77 are directly involved with aircraft maintenance and flight crews.
"They support emergency operations close to home and quite far away," he said. "They deploy when our nation calls and when our governor calls to help keep Indiana and America safe."
Shreve said the federal government currently estimates the new facility would cost about $55 million. It would be built on an empty field at the east end of the Guard's tarmac.
Muennich said the Guard's needs go beyond floor space. He said his soldiers need workshops that are better equipped for the needs of the Black Hawk's complex avionics, engines, and sheet metal, among other things. The Guard is transitioning to the new UH-60M model, which has a heavily digitized cockpit.
"These back shops are woefully inadequate to do what we need them to do to provide our maintainers the space that they need to store the equipment that they have, the repair parts that they need, let alone conduct the repairs that they need off of the main floor," he said. "The ability to upgrade that to a new facility with proper back shops, proper maintenance flow, increases our ability to maintain our aircraft. It will increase our aircraft readiness and allow us to be better prepared when the state or the nation calls us."
Besides its current needs, Muennich said the new facility will help the Guard prepare for future aircraft. Last year, the Army announced it had selected the MV-75 Cheyenne II, a tiltrotor aircraft, as the winner of its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft competition. The MV-75 will eventually replace the Black Hawk.
The military construction bill still has to go through the Senate. Shreve said he's confident the Senate will keep the funding in place.
Shreve also announced he had secured several federal grants for area public-safety agencies. They include $1.65 million for new bulletproof vests and helmets for IMPD, $620,000 for new radios for the Shelbyville Police Department, $500,000 to pay for a new fire rescue truck for the Green Township Volunteer Fire Department, and $120,000 for a mobile command center and fentanyl detection technology for the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Office. Those grants still have to be approved by the full House as well as the Senate.
