On 2 March, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced the award of a long-awaited £1 billion contract for a new medium helicopter (NMH). Leonardo will build and deliver 23 AW149s from its UK plant in Yeovil.
The NMH programme was launched in 2021 to procure up to 44 medium-lift support helicopters to replace the Westland Puma HC2. It initially included three RAF Bell 412 Griffins, three Bell 212s, and five Airbus AS365N3 Dauphins operated by the Army Air Corps, with all aircraft entering service in the late 2020s.
In May 2022, the MoD issued a contract worth between £900 million and £1.2 billion, including air and ground crew training, as well as in-service technical support and maintenance. A year later, it was reported that the number of aircraft had been reduced to a maximum of 35. Initially, Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo and Lockheed Martin bid for the contract with the H175M, AW149 and S-70, respectively, but shortly before the bid deadline, Airbus and Lockheed withdrew from the contest, leaving the AW149 as the only contender.
In November 2023, the UK’s Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) finalised a £122 million contract for the procurement of six Airbus Helicopters H145s to be operated by the RAF’s 84 Squadron in Cyprus and 667 Squadron Army Air Corps in Brunei. They will be used primarily to support aerial firefighting and jungle training. They are replacing the RAF’s Bell 412s and the Army Air Corps’s Bell 212s.
Although the UK government says the NMH contract will safeguard 3,300 jobs, there is no mention of when deliveries would start and finish. The AW149 is also being produced in Italy and Poland, and Leonardo has said that the NMH programme will also benefit from the established supply chain across geographies, which is perfectly normal in the industry. However, the UK industrial contribution to the programme will be significantly higher than in the past.
The only other ongoing project at Yeovil is the Proteus, a test and evaluation programme for the aircraft known as the autonomous development Mule 3 – or ADM3 – which will not enter operational service with the Royal Navy. All the fuselage and avionics are new and have been designed in the UK, with final assembly at Yeovil.
However, Leonardo will want to see substantially more military contracts for either manned or unmanned rotorcraft if its Yeovil facility is to survive beyond the next decade.
by David Oliver
