UK's New Medium Helicopter effort

[Dawes]

Presumably this won't be a clean-sheet-of-paper design?

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/defence/latest/uk-launches-new-medium-helicopter-effort-with-market-interest-day

[Stuart Galbraith]

Most likely to be this, they want to throw Leonardo a bone.

https://uk.leonardocompany.com/en/air/helicopters/military/aw149-medium-helicopter

[lucklucky]

Finally cooler heads prevailed and they go for a conventional helicopter instead waiting 10+ years for the tiltrotor which by the time the Pumas would be falling from skies.

Leonardo/Agusta bought Westland which being only a military company never had critical mass.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Leonardo is Westland Augusta. They just rebranded. 

I agree about tiltrotors. I can see the US Army bitterly regretting their airwolf fixation shortly.

[lucklucky]

I think you are right Leonardo only came later. Agusta bought Westland even if initially was a joint venture. I think the Merlin helicopter they developed together helped the merge .

 

About the future US offers my preference conceptually goes to the Boeing .  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky–Boeing_SB-1_Defiant

Don't takes as much space as a tiltrotor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_V-280_Valor  but  might have other issues i am not seeing.

Note: corrected name to Agusta due to DB warning.

Edited November 22, 2021 by lucklucky

[Stuart Galbraith]

The maintenance schedule is going to be murder I think. They had what was nearly the perfect troop helicopter with the UH60. Why not build on that?

[lucklucky]

This is the civilian version of AW 149 called 189 , it is also in use of HM Rescue Service  including in Falklands

 

Edited November 18, 2021 by lucklucky

[lucklucky]

18 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

The maintenance schedule is going to be murder I think. They had what was nearly the perfect troop helicopter with the UH60. Why not build on that?

UH-60 no, too big for the miserable troop capacity. And this is mostly a quest for speed, they double the speed of traditional helicopter. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Highly crashworthy,and you can bolt damn near anything on it. It's a truck with rotor blades.Ok, it's not a mil8, but the US military dodged getting the next best thing,which was Merlin.

I honestly think if the want speed, they should use a c130.

[lucklucky]

In terms of crashworthiness the AW 149 landing gear are better positioned than UH 60 for the occupants.

From wiki and brochure they seem to have have same sink rate resistance. https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/rms/documents/black-hawk/S-70-Black-Hawk-Brochure.pdf     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_AW149

In terms of configuration i think the Mil Mi 8 is the most logical one overall.

From wiki

 This is the first time the Thai armed forces have acquired Russian aircraft instead of American aircraft.^[13] Flight International quotes the Thai Army's rationale: "We are buying three Mi-17 helicopters for the price of one Black Hawk. The Mi-17 can also carry more than 30 troops, while the Black Hawk could carry only 13 soldiers. These were the key factors behind the decision."

 

Edited November 19, 2021 by lucklucky

[Colin]

Canada leased Mi-17 for Afghanistan, they performed well. I would not be sad if we replaced our Griffons with Mi-17's

[R011]

13 minutes ago, Colin said:

Canada leased Mi-17 for Afghanistan, they performed well. I would not be sad if we replaced our Griffons with Mi-17's

They seem to be good aircraft, but I'm not sure I would trust Russia as either a supplier or a source of long term support for a new build Mi-17 fleet as opposed to leasing a few for a short time.  Wouldn't either S-92 or AW101 do the same job?  We already operate variants of them (CH-148 Cyclone and CH-149 Cormorant).

[Simon Tan]

Russia bad. End. 

[R011]

They've only been an enemy since 1917,  Even when we were giving them tanks to fight the Nazis, they were spying on us and attempting to subvert our politics.  We thought they might have changed after 1991, but it turned out they just rebranded.

So no, I don't trust them to sell us military hardware we might use against them and they don't have a good track record of providing good customer support even to their friends.

[Stuart Galbraith]

7 hours ago, lucklucky said:

In terms of crashworthiness the AW 149 landing gear are better positioned than UH 60 for the occupants.

From wiki and brochure they seem to have have same sink rate resistance. https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/rms/documents/black-hawk/S-70-Black-Hawk-Brochure.pdf     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_AW149

In terms of configuration i think the Mil Mi 8 is the most logical one overall.

From wiki

 This is the first time the Thai armed forces have acquired Russian aircraft instead of American aircraft.^[13] Flight International quotes the Thai Army's rationale: "We are buying three Mi-17 helicopters for the price of one Black Hawk. The Mi-17 can also carry more than 30 troops, while the Black Hawk could carry only 13 soldiers. These were the key factors behind the decision."

 

Ok, so buy AW149's.

You know that wont happen, the US defence industry is so incestuous, they will never allow foreigners to supply helicopters without taking the lions share of the work.

I have to say, I really like AW's work. EH101 got a lot of flak for not being faster, but its the lift capability that has proven more important.

Edited November 19, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[lucklucky]

The AW 149 has the advantage of keeping the W alive. Plus they have the AW 139 and other smaller models to fill the Gazelle etc.

EH 101 issue is that is a very rich person helicopter. Too complex with 3 engines, what it can achieve would probably can be done with 2 today. We Portugal are happy with them for our big EEZ.

I really don't know how NH90 went to be such a maintenance and product support disaster.

[Dawes]

USAF's new(ish) MH-139 Grey Wolf is an AW-139 variant. I think that Boeing may be running most of the show on this program, though.

[DB]

Leonardo was Finmeccanica. I suspect rebranded in part because the latter name was far too closely associated with government corruption from the Berlusconi era.

And it was "Agusta" not "Augusta".

[lucklucky]

No. There probably have been corruption in every year...  Leonardo everyone can pronounce. 

Indeed Count Agusta  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Agusta

[Stuart Galbraith]

16 hours ago, DB said:

Leonardo was Finmeccanica. I suspect rebranded in part because the latter name was far too closely associated with government corruption from the Berlusconi era.

And it was "Agusta" not "Augusta".

Just tried typing it again on my Kindle and it autocorrects Agusta to Augusta. I guess Bezo's is spending all the money sending octogenarian actors into space.

 

[DB]

I mentioned it only because it's a common error. Like "Northrup".

[Stuart Galbraith]

Leonardo pledged a new production line in Yeovil, if they get the contract.

https://www.ft.com/content/87412d27-7485-4bd8-8a8e-1ecac075332b

[lucklucky]

https://verticalmag.com/press-releases/bel-air-aviation-aw189-reaches-engine-flight-hour-milestone-with-ge-ct7-power/

GE press release regarding their engines.

“We were among the first operators in the world to take delivery of the AW189 and are very proud to maintain our position as the AW189 fleet leader worldwide, offering a diverse range of offshore flights in the North Sea,” said Susanne Hessellund, CEO at Bel Air Aviation. “The fact that we have now flown more than 5,000 hours on the first of our AW189 helicopters without any issues shows the high reliability of both the CT7 engines and the AW189 helicopter itself. We highly appreciate our close cooperation with GE and look forward to continuing our partnership.”

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[lucklucky]

The little sister.

It is the implementation of a 2020 intention https://aresdifesa.it/intergovernmental-agreement-for-aw-169-helicopters-to-austria/

They have been clients of Agusta with the 60's Bell designed variants.