LONDON — Executives at helicopter maker Leonardo pushed back against a competitor’s assertion that the Italian company’s AW149 helicopter, in play for the British Latest Medium Helicopter program, isn’t military-grade enough.
Mike Morrisroe, the corporate’s lead for U.K. helicopter campaigns, on Wednesday disputed a claim by a Lockheed Martin executive from yesterday on the DSEI arms fair in London that the U.S.-based company’s offering of the Black Hawk was the just one developed purely for military use.
The AW149 meets relevant crashworthiness standards and is built for survivability on the battlefield, with a construction meant to “minimize” the impact of small-arms fire against the cabin and the blades, he said.
Paul Livingston, CEO of Lockheed’s U.K. subsidiary, had illustrated the Black Hawk’s military utility by saying the corporate’s offering is the just one offering retractable seats able to withdrawing injured pilots to the helicopter cabin without having to exit the aircraft.
For Leonardo’s Mark Burnand, the corporate’s chief test pilot, the utility of such a setup is questionable if the helicopter’s self-defense features work properly.
“You’re not going to seek out yourself in that situation in the primary place,” he said.
Leonardo presented itself as a bastion of U.K. helicopter constructing at first of DSEI, boasting of £1.6 billion ($2 billion) in exports during the last 18 months including orders for the design, development and manufacture of latest aircraft, upgrade programs and support deals.
The firm said the number added to an additional £5bn in helicopters exports from the U.K. secured over the preceding nine years.
It’s the one firm with “end-to-end helicopter manufacturing capability” within the country, with greater than half of the U.K. military’s frontline fleet starting life at Leonardo’s Yeovil facility in Somerset, England.
No wonder, Leonardo said, that its U.K. onshore helicopters business has recently been granted official status because the “Home of British Helicopters.”
Should its AW149 win the U.K.’s Latest Medium Helicopter contest, the firm will construct the platform at Yeovil and has promised that 60-70% of its content and through-life support could be carried out within the country.
“Investment in skills and research generates precious U.K. mental property and sustains an onshore industrial base that gives” the U.K. Ministry of Defence “with direct access to critical skills and capabilities that underpin operational independence and technological advantage,” it said.
Sebastian Sprenger is associate editor for Europe at Defense News, reporting on the state of the defense market within the region, and on U.S.-Europe cooperation and multi-national investments in defense and global security. Previously he served as managing editor for Defense News. He is predicated in Cologne, Germany.
Tom Kington is the Italy correspondent for Defense News.