Argentina seeks additional Sea King helicopters

The Comando de Aviación Naval Argentina (COAN, Argentine Naval Aviation Command) is looking to acquire two more surplus Sikorsky SH-3 Sea Kings from the USA under Foreign Military Sales (FMS) conditions.

The Minister of Defence, Agustin Rossi, voiced this intention and said negotiations are under way. We do not see any approved FMS requests down the pipeline yet, so it will probably take some time before this comes to fruition.

The Argentine Navy already sourced seven former US Navy Sea Kings, four of which were put into service receiving serials 0881/2-H-240 to 0884/2-H-243. Currently, 0882 and 0884 are confirmed as operational and are usually boarded on icebraker ARA Almirante Irizar.

The Scramble database shows the following details on the former US Navy SH-3 Sea Kings:

ASH-3H Sea King
0881/2-H-240 (c/n 61315) ex BuNo 152121
0882/2-H-241 (c/n 61135) ex BuNo 149718
0883/2-H-242 (c/n 61...) most likely ex BuNo 154122, to be confirmed
0884/2-H-243 (c/n 61374) ex BuNo 152709
SH-3D Sea King
154105 (c/n 61391) stored
154116 (c/n 61406) preserved at Puerto Belgrano
156487 (c/n 61433) preserved at Estancia Santa Romana as S-61D-4 0678/2-H-235

If you have additional information on the Sea Kings or the two additional ones, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Photo: COAN (thanks Rico Angerman)