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The global helicopter industry: rising to demand
The US military helicopter market is currently undergoing something of a resurgence since the cancellation of the RAH-66 Comanche 'stealth helicopter' in February 2004. This allowed some USD14.6 billion that was earmarked for Comanche to be spent on restructuring and revitalising US Army aviation.
Rather than buy Comanche, the US Army now plans to purchase an additional several hundred new aircraft over the next six years, including 368 new armed reconnaissance helicopters, 303 new light utility helicopters (LUHs) and hundreds of additional UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopters.
Boeing is in the process of converting the last of 597 AH-64A attack helicopters into D-model versions and is expected during 2006 to pick up an engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract to begin work on the Block III versions of the aircraft. This is now part of the US Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) project to connect all its major platforms via digital communications systems and foreign customers are expected to modify their helicopters to maintain commonality.
Foreign legion
For much of the 1990s the Pentagon ploughed most of its rotorcraft research and development funding into the V-22 and RAH-66, which starved American helicopter manufacturers of funds to develop new conventional helicopters.
This was first felt in the commercial, police and homeland security sectors where more modern French, German and Italian light and medium helicopters such as the Dauphin, Fennec, Panther, Squirrel and A109 won an increasing share of the non-military market.
Non-US helicopter manufacturers realised that to win business from the Pentagon they would need to overcome Congressional resistance to foreign products.
The VHX contest to replace the Presidential VH-60s and VH-3s was the first major test of European attempts to sell into the US military helicopter market.
AgustaWestland teamed with US defence giant Lockheed Martin to win the VHX contest with the US-101 derivative of its Merlin product.
AgustaWestland has teamed with L-3 Communications to offer a version of its AB139 for the US Army's LUH contest and EADS has teamed with Sikorsky to offer the UH-145, based on the Eurocopter EC645.
By Tim Ripley JDW Correspondent
London
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