APDR February 2020: Airbus Helicopter makes unsolicited offer of upgraded Tigers plus H-145M for LAND 4503

APDR February 2020: Airbus Helicopter makes unsolicited offer of upgraded Tigers plus H-145M for LAND 4503 The Army currently has 22 Tiger ARHs in service – and the replacement program calls for two squadrons of 12 helicopters plus an additional 5 for training. Airbus Helicopter sources confirm that the company will submit an unsolicited offer shortly to Defence meeting their requirement in another way. Their offer will be for 22 upgraded Tigers plus 7 H-145M Special Forces light attack / reconnaissance machines. The big advantage of this offer is that Airbus say that it is around $3 billion less than what Army would need to pay for 29 new dedicated attack / reconnaissance helicopters. Even if they are wrong by a billion dollars, that is still an enormous saving to Defence. As we have previously pointed out, the Army Aviation community is now very happy with the performance of the Tigers – as are their other users, Germany, France and Spain. The Australian aircraft have been used very lightly, with an average of only 2,000 hours per airframe. Since they are designed for 8,000 hours – and that is without any further modifications – they could easily be kept flying until 2040 and beyond. Read more in the current issue of APDR (Free to read with registration or via Facebook/Linkedin): https://venturaapdr.partica.online/apdr/apdr-feb-2020/features/airbus-helicopter-unsolicited-offer-of-upgraded-tigers-plus-h-145m-for-land-4503