Introduction

In February 2023, photos and videos emerged showing a helicopter belonging to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence’s Intelligence Directorate, which featured an unusual blue-black livery and Ukrainian identification markings. It was later determined the aircraft was a ‘crowd-funded’ purchase from a private aviation company of a 43-year-old UH-60A Black Hawk. Since then, Ukraine seems to have acquired a second UH-60A (circa, early 2024) and given it a more military looking, olive-green color scheme. The two Black Hawks are used extensively in Ukrainian military service.

ICM has very accurately reproduced a line of UH-60 airframes in 1/48th scale and offers several variants, each with their own unique equipment configurations. In January 2025 ICM released this Ukrainian Defense Intelligence variant with marking options for both helicopters. This is an impressive and challenging kit given its unique livery option (option 1 in the kit) and relatively small size. ICM continues to develop and produce fantastic kits and this UH-60A Black Hawk is no exception.

Thanks go out to ICM for producing these fine kits and providing this copy to IPMS for review.

In the Box

Like the other ICM kits, removing the full-color illustrated top cover reveals a sturdy, plain white cardboard box with a lid of its own that protects the kit parts. Inside the box is a sealed bag containing the 12 sprues of gray parts and the 1 sprue of clear parts. The “D” and “E” sprues are duplicated so you will end up with a few spare parts (which is good because some are small and easy to break/lose). There are less than 400 parts provided and about 100 unused parts, so you’ll be using a little less than 300 parts for this variant. 80 of these parts are for the 2 flight deck seats, 2 gunner seats and the 11 passenger seats. There is a very nicely done16-page booklet of instructions for the pod with a color painting and decal placement guide on the cover. Color decals are provided for the 2 marking options:

The interior and exterior fuselage panel parts are very sharply molded and include pod structural stringers, electrical conduits, floor attachment points and even a circuit breaker panel. Panel lines and raised rivets are to scale and very nicely done. The attention to detail that went into the kit parts and the molds is fantastic. ICM’s formulation of plastic is slightly soft and responds very well to fast-acting liquid cement. There was very little flash on just a few parts. The clear parts are perfectly clean and clear with no impurities. Any lingering molding marks (ejection pin marks and injection stumps) are hidden during the assembly – very well-thought out.

Construction/Finishing

The engineering of this kit is very precise and the alignment and fit of parts is excellent. For all practical purposes, there are no gaps between parts and the kit can be assembled with no filler/putty. However, this also means that slight misalignment of one part, especially early on in the assembly, can quickly snowball into problems. Dry-fitting is very important to understand the alignment and fit of all the fuselage parts, particularly fuselage sides and top and bottom panels, including clear/window parts.

The assembly sequence called out in the instruction booklet is well-thought out and shows the best sequence, but more experienced modelers might find alternative sequences that would allow them to paint, finish and fit subassemblies. Be sure to follow the part callouts in the instructions as some the passenger seat-back support structure parts are slightly different sizes.

The clear parts are exceptionally clear and without distortion. The instruction booklet includes full size paint masks for all the window parts. These masks require you transfer the shapes to masking tape (somehow). When you place them correctly, these masks will keep the windows clear and will leave the window pillar/frame structures open to be painted. There are 3^rd party companies that produce pre-cut, self-adhesive paint masks for this kit’s windows. I opted to use ASK Distribution’s double-sided (interior and exterior) window masks (# 200-M48297), made for ICM’s 1/48^th scale Black Hawks (https://www.artscale.eu/). These masks worked very well through all the layers of paint and clear coating, without bleed-thru and without leaving sticky residue on the part.

The decals are very accurate and bright but beware, they are very thin and very sensitive to touch. They slide of the backing paper pretty easily with warm water. The model surface should be pre-wetted with setting solution or water and then fine tweezers and/or a toothpick can be used to move them off the backing paper onto the model. The decals responded very well to setting solution and conformed to the shape, over rivets and panels lines, with no bubbling or silvering. The decals were sealed using gloss clear (Tamiya, TS-13) with no issues whatsoever.

The internal subassemblies were painted along the way using the colors called out in the instruction booklet as a guide. In the interest of time, the instrument and circuit breaker panels were painted rather than using the provided decals.

ICM does produce a pre-packaged acrylic paint set, referred to in the instructions as “ICM 3067 - Acrylic paint set for US Black Hawk Helicopters”. While this set of paints is a good start it does not contain the correct exterior colors for Ukraine marking option 1. A detailed color callout table is shown on the front of the instruction booklet. The external paint scheme (marking option 1) is unique and glossy, to say the least, for a special purpose military helicopter.

You can find ICM’s step-by-step assembly video for this kit on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8NbODEne6w .

Conclusions

ICM’s “UH-60A Black Hawk, Defence Intelligence of Ukraine” is a great kit. Even with all the turmoil in Ukraine, ICM is able to crank out fantastically detailed and accurate kits like this one. The engineering accuracy and detail in their kits is second to none.

If there was one thing I would ask ICM to consider, it would be to use their digital models of this aircraft (as seen in the digital instructions on YouTube) to develop paint masks for the white/blue/black exterior color scheme (marking option 1). This paint scheme is very complicated between the colors and flat/semi-gloss/gloss areas and was difficult to mask, especially at this scale, and I didn’t do it justice.

While this 1/48^th scale Ukrainian UH-60A kit could be built by someone with moderate modeling experience, it is best suited for more experienced modelers that can see a few steps ahead in their mind (for painting or to see if they might be headed for trouble) and to adjust the building sequence to get the most from their building experience.

I highly recommend this Defence Intelligence of Ukraine UH-60A kit for anyone interested in special purpose aircraft and utility helicopters.

Many thanks to ICM for providing this kit to IPMS for review and a shout-out to IPMS USA for giving me the opportunity to review it.

Additional Information

There are 3^rd parties that produce a variety of detail-up sets for ICMs line of 1/48^th scale UH-60 kits such as resin conversions, photo-etched parts, paint masks and 3D decals representing interior control/indicator and circuit breaker panels. These can be found by simple internet searches.