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Built by Sikorsky and based in part on the UH-60 Black Hawk platform, the MH-60 Romeo serves as the USN\u2019s primary anti-submarine and surface warfare helicopter, while the MH-60 Sierra holds a wide range of mission sets, from surface warfare to maritime interdiction operations, personnel recovery, special warfare support, search-and-rescue, medical evacuation, logistics, and airborne mine countermeasure, to name a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The IPT manages projects for Seahawk propulsion, flight controls, and structural components, and collaborates with other IPTs on avionics, mission systems, and software \u2014 projects that span multiple areas of responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prior to arriving in Maryland, however, Munro served from July 2022 to July 2023 as staff officer to the chief of liaison to the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in Egypt. The MFO was created in 1981 following the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979, and stood up in April 1982 as Israel completed withdrawal from the Sinai. A contingent of Canadian Armed Forces members has been participating in the MFO since September 1985 under a mission called Operation Calumet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facilitating a peace treaty and sourcing helicopter components might seem worlds apart, but Munro has found remarkable congruency between the two. Working in a multinational setting in the Sinai, he quickly learned that \u201calthough we speak the same language, we don\u2019t always speak the same language.\u201d Qualifying statements and ensuring language and assumptions match applies to supporting a complex helicopter system that is vital to the USN and international customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou hear an acronym, based on context you think it means something, but you have to ask to ensure your understanding,\u201d he noted. \u201cYou are clarifying intent a lot of times, just as you are trying to learn new policies and processes, in addition to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Egypt, relationships were intensely personal, built through face-to-face engagement over time. \u201cWe\u2019d talk about who you are and where you came from, the challenges that you\u2019re facing, and what your family is like. Once you learned more about who you were as individuals, then you started to work more on the professional side, working through those challenges,\u201d Munro said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve never been a fan of calling someone when I need their help. I\u2019d like to have that relationship before I need to ask them for something. I think that working with ultimately 15 different militaries, dealing with the Egyptian and the Israeli forces, allowed me to become comfortable in the unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though a vastly different setting, the procurement and sustainment environment of NAVAIR was a step into the unknown. Co-leading a mostly civilian team, with limited reach back to a fellow Canadian with corporate knowledge of how U.S. processes are conducted, he\u2019s approached the job \u201cwith a lot of humility \u2026 because you need other people to assist you and [provide] answers and information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that [both] experiences have been similar. The difference is that in Egypt, I was going into something that was more established,\u201d he noted of the knowledge passed on by successive rotations and the experience of his boss, an Army colonel who arrived earlier and \u201cpointed me in the right direction until I got my feet underneath me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maritime helicopter selection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Munro\u2019s love for aviation comes from his father, Shawn. Though never able to join the air cadets in the Vancouver region when he was young, Shawn made sure every opportunity was available to the son, including enrolling in the cadet program just before Munro\u2019s 12th<\/sup> birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs I was growing up, he was passionate about aviation,\u201d Munro recalled. \u201cHe kind of lived vicariously through me, and encouraged me to follow that path.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From age seven until his mid-teens, one of Munro\u2019s annual outings was to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, just over the border at the northern end of Puget Sound, for the air show, which, among many aircraft, featured maritime helicopters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At 17, he received a glider scholarship with the air cadets at 19 Wing Comox, B.C., and was accepted into the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) in Kingston, Ontario, the following summer. Nonetheless, he was able to return to Comox as a glider instructor while he was completing a degree in business at RMC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat prepared me well for future pilot training,\u201d Munro said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After finishing Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) pilot training in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, and Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, on the Grob-G120A, CT-156 Harvard II, and then the Bell 206 and 412, in the early 2010s, he was selected for the CH-124 Sea King helicopter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He served with 423 Maritime Helicopter Squadron and 406 Maritime Operational Training Squadron at 12 Wing Shearwater in Nova Scotia for the next 7.5 years as both squadrons transitioned to the CH-148 Cyclone, becoming a crew commander, maintenance test pilot, and ultimately, an instructor on the new platform. Munro was a part of the first Helicopter Air Detachment to deploy the CH-148, operating from HMCS Ville de Qu\u00e9bec in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the tragic crash of a Cyclone, callsign \u201cStalker 22,\u201d into the Mediterranean in April 2020, which killed all six Canadian Armed Forces members onboard, he was assigned to support one of the families. He then served as executive assistant to the 12 Wing commander, and did a tour with 1 Canadian Air Division (1 CAD) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as one of two staff officers for maritime helicopter airworthiness, before the opportunity with the MFO in Egypt presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arriving in Cairo as the Covid-19 pandemic subsided, Munro was thrust into a role markedly different from his recent predecessors. The job had been vacant for the previous nine months, and during the pandemic, liaison among the various parties in the region had become largely digital. Now, it was returning to face-to-face meetings, and frequently. One or two times each month, he and his boss would fly by UH-60 helicopter to sit with counterparts in the Egyptian town of Taba, near the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, or by C-295 and then ground transport to Rafah on the border with Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI became less of an EA and more of an aide-de-camp, a traveling secretary, a travel planner, a problem solver,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a great opportunity, exactly what I had hoped I would experience. It was similar to my position working for the 12 Wing commander, but with an opportunity to experience those higher-level meetings. I was exposed to something that, at the time as a captain, you just don\u2019t see a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In October 2022, Munro was recommended for the job with NAVAIR, a position once held by his former boss with 1 CAD. Working through the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, he completed the necessary paperwork over the next months. And within a few days of landing back in Canada in July 2023, he was in a rental car driving to Pax River after a flight to Washington, D.C., for the initial orientation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seahawk portfolio<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sustaining the MH-60 offers a window to both current and emerging technology. The Sierra entered service in 2002, replacing the CH-46D Sea Knight and HH-60H Seahawk fleets, and achieved full operational capability (FOC) in 2016. The Romeo, which replaced the legacy SH-60B and SH-60F aircraft, began operating in 2005 and reached FOC in 2010. Both are established platforms with thousands of flight hours under their rotor blades, but both include continuous improvement programs to confront the latest threats and meet new mission requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty broad portfolio,\u201d Munro explained. Other IPTs manage software and avionics systems, but across PMA-299, there is a wider life extension program for both fleets. And it has a lot of operational expertise to draw on. Munro is the only serving military member in his IPT but oversees a team of former military and ex-Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin technicians and aircrew with years of experience \u201cunderstanding how the systems will work for the operator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is truly a project management position,\u201d he said. \u201cMy role is less about doing and more about overseeing. And for me, being the newly promoted major, this is a good opportunity to stretch that muscle and learn how to watch and observe \u2014 and when to assist and when to let people do their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As with most U.S. military programs, the scope and scale of the MH-60 fleets has been the most noticeable adjustment from working with the CH-148 Cyclone. The RCAF will eventually operate 28 Cyclones. NAVAIR has about 500 Seahawks and some projects also involve the U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk and U.S. Air Forces HH-60 Pave Hawk fleets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe magnitude is much larger than my little 12 Wing brain can fully understand,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the exchange could clearly be viewed as a stepping stone into acquisition with the RCAF\u2019s Directorate of Air Requirements (DAR) \u2014 in less than a year, it has provided great exposure to flight line processes, engineering and management, Munro acknowledged \u2014 NAVAIR\u2019s systems and procedures are distinct and not necessarily the logical leap to DAR one might think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonetheless, he is acquiring project management expertise for a complex multi-mission capability. Senior RCAF officers in recent months have highlighted the placement of exchange officers with allies operating platforms, such as the F-35A fighter and the P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft to help develop common maintenance and operator tactics, techniques and procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy role is more tactical in terms of getting projects completed for the U.S. Navy to continue to meet the mission demanded of that aircraft,\u201d Munro explained. \u201cIn terms of my future employment, I will have grown a lot in the next two and a half years or potentially longer, and that experience will allow me to do better in any role in Canada. My personal hope is that I\u2019m not pigeonholed into an acquisition role, just because that is adjacent to what I\u2019m doing right now. If that is the right position for me at the right time, then that\u2019s fantastic. But I think that it would be short sighted to look at it as this is the only value that we\u2019re getting from this position.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Munro officially started the job in October and emphasized that after just six months, he\u2019s still in a learning phase, coming to grips with the full range of the NAVAIR program. \u201cIf we were to do this interview next year, I might have a completely different emphasis,\u201d he said, \u201cand I\u2019m sure that I would have different stories to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He\u2019s taken full advantage of NAVAIR\u2019s location to visit the Smithsonian and other points of interest in Washington, Baltimore, and nearby cities. \u201cI want to grow personally and professionally,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lessons learned on deployment in the Sinai have helped an RCAF exchange officer co-lead a team supporting the U.S. Navy\u2019s maritime helicopter fleet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":358101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358091","features","type-features","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military","entry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/358091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/features"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiesmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.skiesmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/7948-1-1024x681.jpg\")
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