UK New Medium Helicopter programme - dead, or resting?
Recent decisions and announcements by the UK Government and Ministry of Defence call into question the commitment to maintaining an medium Support Helicopter capability. The following is a re-cap and analysis of the current state of the RAF's New Medium Helicopter programme.
The New Medium Helicopter (NMH) programme kicked off in November 2021 with a Market Interest Day, which outlined a £1bn programme for between 36 and 44 "off the shelf" aircraft requiring minimal modification or integration. A contract in the summer of 2023 was envisaged, with service entry early in 2025 to align with the Puma out-of-service date. Following numerous delays, there are now significant doubts as to whether the programme will proceed at all.
NMH was specified to perform the following roles:
- Lift
- Light Assault
- Find
- Emergency Response
- Medevac/Casevac
In doing so it would replace the Puma HC2 in the Support Helicopter role, along with Bell 212/412s in Cyprus and Brunei and Dauphins supporting UK Special Forces.
Competition? What competition...
The programme initially attracted a number of expressions of interest, but prospective bids from Bell, Boeing and Acehawk Aerospace were withdrawn or failed at the PQQ stage, leaving 3 active bidders:
- Airbus with the H175M
- Leonardo with the AW149
- Lockheed Martin with the S-70 Blackhawk
By the time the MOD made their down-selection, the programme was already falling behind schedule.
In February 2024, the MOD issued an Invitation to Negotiate to the three remaining bidders. However by this stage there were strong rumours that the quantity of aircraft to be purchased would be reduced, perhaps substantially. Also, the MOD tweaked the assessment criteria to increase the weighting applied to 'Social Value' - emphasising UK design and manufacturing content in a way that many observers concluded was significantly favourable to just one bidder - Leonardo. By August 2024, both Lockheed Martin and Airbus withdrew from the programme, leaving Leonardo as the sole bidder.
With a new Government in place and a Strategic Defence Review freshly launched, attempts to probe the Government on plans for the NMH received the stock response of "the proposal will be evaluated through 2025 when, subject to Government approvals, a contract award is anticipated" and questions regarding actual quantities were rebuffed, claiming competition sensitivity (despite by this stage there being no competition...).
Slicing and dicing the capability
In April 2024, with the NMH contest still theoretically underway, the MOD awarded a sole-source contract to Airbus for 6 H145 helicopters. This £122m contract, awarded without competition, will provide aircraft from 2026 to perform the Cyprus and Brunei missions. Crucially, it sliced away part of the original NMH requirement and by doing so validated the rumours of quantity reductions.
Mind the gap
The MOD contracted Airbus in 2009 to perform a life extension and upgrade of the RAF Puma to HC2 standard. Entering service in 2015 after the original contract for 28 aircraft was cut to 24, an out of service date of 2025 was anticipated - to be replaced by the NMH. However Airbus confirmed that the Puma service life could readily be extended to 2030, easing pressure on an NMH programme running 2 years behind it's original schedule.
It was somewhat surprising therefore that in November 2024 the Government announced that the Puma's retirement date would continue to be March 2025, more than 2 years before the replacement NMH could be delivered under the most optimistic of circumstances. This news prompted concerns and questions regarding the yawning capability gap between the Puma retirement and NMH service entry, however statements from the MOD on this subject (including under questioning from the Commons Defence Committee) have focused entirely on bridging the gap in Cyprus and Brunei before the H145s are delivered in 2026, with no mention of the future of the RAF's Support Helicopter Force based at RAF Benson.
Leaving No. 33 and 230 Squadrons without aircraft for in excess of two years raises obvious issues about how the pilots and crew, not to mention engineers and technicians, can maintain qualification and currency. The cost of extending the life of the Puma for a further 3 years would have been relatively modest, and re-establishing those capabilities on a new aircraft after a 2+ year gap and the inevitable personnel losses will not be cost-free, making the Puma retirement an odd decision if the MOD is serious about maintaining a medium support helicopter capability.
This could also call into question the future of RAF Benson itself. Apart from the Puma squadrons, Benson is also home to the Chinook Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) which only moved there in 2015 due to the then increasing Chinook fleet size at RAF Odiham, coupled with the transfer away of the Merlin aircraft for conversion to replace the Sea King as the Royal Navy's Commando Helicopter Force. However the announcement of the Puma's retirement was accompanied by the news that 14 of the RAF's oldest Chinook would be retired, and the down-sizing of the Chinook fleet will surely allow the return of the OCU to Odiham. Would it be worth continuing to operate an RAF station at Benson just to accommodate the National Police Air Service and Thames Valley Air Ambulance, who could potentially move to Oxford airport at Kidlington?
The retirement of the Puma before it's replacement is even under contract, the sole-sourcing of part of the requirement to Airbus, coupled with MOD statements regarding capability gaps neglecting to mention the medium support helicopter capability at all, lead me to suspect that the MOD plans to cancel the NMH entirely, and is just waiting for the SDR to provide cover for it to do so.
