Across North America and beyond, Black Hawks are steadily transitioning from military service into firefighting, search-and-rescue, and disaster response roles.
For Bill Parsons, executive vice president of operations at Ace Aeronautics, preparing those aircraft for their second life has become both a technical challenge and a public safety mission — a topic he addressed during MHM’s inaugural VMRO Conference in Irving, Texas, in 2025.
That shift is already accelerating. As aircraft move through the U.S. government’s Black Hawk Exchange and Sales Transaction (BEST) pipeline, more are entering service with state firefighting agencies, sheriff’s departments, utility operators, search-and-rescue units, and international civil protection organizations.
Readying those airframes for frontline public safety work requires far more than routine maintenance. It places new demands on maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) providers tasked with converting decades-old military helicopters into dependable civilian platforms.
Within this evolving landscape, Ace Aeronautics, based in Guntersville, Alabama, has emerged as a key contributor to the refurbishment and modernization efforts shaping the Black Hawk’s second operational life.
“These aircraft are going to save lives — firefighting, rescue, disaster response. Our job is to make sure they’re ready,” Parsons said.
Ace Aeronautics’ growth has been steady rather than rapid, guided by an emphasis on maintaining operational control and consistent quality. The company employs roughly 240 people across specialized hangars supporting avionics modifications, heavy maintenance, paint, and final assembly, with the UH-60 accounting for much of the workload.
Despite sustained demand from public safety and international operators, leadership has avoided expanding too quickly. As Parsons put it, “Once you go from 500 to 1,000 to 1,500 people, you spend more time trying to control the operation than improving the aircraft.”
That approach reflects the realities of parapublic aviation, where aircraft operate in demanding environments and reliability carries more weight than production volume.
One example of that approach is Ace’s focus on paint and media blast capability. While often considered cosmetic, the company treats stripping and surface preparation as a critical part of assessing an aircraft’s condition.
Removing legacy coatings frequently exposes corrosion that would otherwise remain undetected until the aircraft is operating in demanding missions such as wildfire suppression or disaster response. As Parsons noted, until the paint comes off, the true condition of the airframe remains unknown.
For agencies investing in surplus UH-60s, that discovery process is often the first real measure of what it will take to bring a former military airframe safely into civilian service.
If corrosion is often the most visible issue uncovered during refurbishment, wiring can be one of the most significant. Aging electrical systems are a recurring reliability concern in surplus UH-60s, particularly as the aircraft move into night firefighting, rescue, and disaster response roles that depend on stable avionics and mission equipment.
Rather than integrating new systems into aging infrastructure, Ace removes and replaces large portions of the wiring during major modernization work. Parsons said earlier generations of the aircraft were prone to harness-related failures that could occur without warning, a risk he considers unacceptable in civilian public-safety operations.
Rebuilding the electrical system, he explained, is intended to provide “a system that should live five to 10 years and you shouldn’t have a major problem.”
That focus on long-term reliability also shapes how Ace approaches the broader civilian transition unfolding through the U.S. government’s BEST pipeline. As auction activity resumes and additional aircraft move toward public operators, refurbishment capacity becomes the bridge between military retirement and frontline service.
Parsons said the flow of available airframes is likely to increase, noting that “you’re going to see more Black Hawks hitting” the market, along with the arrival of Chinooks.
For parapublic agencies facing longer wildfire seasons and growing disaster response demands, that influx could influence fleet planning. But, Parsons emphasized, aircraft must still be inspected, modified, and certified on realistic timelines before they can enter service.
That pressure is especially visible in aerial firefighting. Parsons described the demand bluntly: “Firefighting is just crazy. I don’t think you can keep enough aircraft out there to meet the demand.”
Parsons said Ace’s growing workload increasingly centers on external buckets, belly tanks, structural reinforcement, and night-vision compatibility tailored to fire and rescue missions — upgrades he views as essential to converting former military aircraft into reliable public-safety platforms.
He emphasized that the transition extends well beyond hardware. Once an aircraft enters Federal Aviation Administration oversight, certification standards, documentation, and regulatory traceability become central. Even experienced maintainers may require additional manufacturer training before work can be signed off
As more aircraft move through the pipeline and into civilian hands, Parsons expects demand to remain strong. Meeting it, he suggested, will depend not just on the number of available airframes, but on the capacity to inspect, modify, and certify them for service.
In case you missed it: Ace Aeronautics’ Bill Parsons and Jordan Seago join Vertical MRO Podcast host Jon Gray and producer David Kreutzkamp to discuss the influx of UH-60s entering the civilian market, the growing demand for skilled maintainers in firefighting operations, and how Ace Aeronautics is positioning itself to help prepare technicians for the future of the fleet.
