Airbus’ activation of the “Helicopter 0” test bed, the consolidation of three flying prototypes at Marignane, and preparations for an Albacete assembly line together indicate that the Tiger MkIII effort is entering its most decisive engineering period. If the transition from ground integration to flight testing proceeds as planned toward 2026, France and Spain will be positioned to field a more connected Tiger configuration aligned with emerging requirements for networked operations and crewed–uncrewed cooperation, while maintaining a joint industrial base to support the fleet through the next stage of its service life.
edit brain flub the AW249 Fenice is very far along in active development, I think my points still stand. Why did it take until the 2020s for Europe to field an actual equivalent to the AH-64?
I don’t know as much about the Tiger but Europe not having an domestically produced attack helicopter is a major issue given how modern warfare has decidedly centered the attack helicopter as the nexus of air defense and combined arms with manned and unmanned platforms.
The AH-64 simply outclasses the Tiger, the AH-1Z Cobra is more similar but is still far superior of a platform both in sophistication and with respect to the fact that it has been repeatedly battle tested and iterated throughout the aircraft’s life.
Unfortunately for Europe the Ka-42 and Mi-28 also represent deadlier and more mature helicopter programs than Europe can field until the AW249 Fenice is operational. Europe is essentially bullshitting the attack helicopter role right now with Lakotas/H145 scout helicopters except for Poland and the UK which wisely invested in AH-64s.
My conclusion is thus that no the Tiger is probably not a great deal but also I consider it existential Europe get serious about making an actually useful attack helicopter and stop listening to internet posters decrying the end of helicopters like idiots lol.
If it was me? I would buy those AH-1Z and UH-1Y helicopters in a heartbeat and throw the Tiger in the trash, even given how batshit crazy the US has become there is just no comparison and the production que is totally clear for a major order of AH-1Z and UH-1Y helicopters. I also think it was a very good idea for Poland to invest in a huge order of AH-64s.
Honestly it mystifies me why Europe and a lot of the rest of the world looked at the development of the AH-64 and AH-1 through the end of the cold war and thought “Nah those are obsolete, we don’t need to focus on those kind of assets” it might be one of the biggest unforced errors in military development in the last 30 years besides Russia never addressing fundamental issues with its armor and then starting a massive war. Look at the original design goals of the AH-64 Longbow program, they nearly perfectly describe what warfare has become decades later.
Honestly I think the difference is the US military understands the concept of cavalry better than Europe and understands how helicopters inherently are cavalry and how that radically and irrevocably changes warfare, drones are an echo of the same truth but minaturized to the perfect size for an attack helicopter to hunt down…
Helicopters aren’t a spice you add in or just light scout platforms, they change the basic rhythm, spatial extent and pace of war, so do drones.
a) take a look at the Leonardo AW249 fenice, b) only Germany is substituting the Tiger with the Airbus light jokie-i-copter.
facepalm of course yeah that is a huge project to watch! Definitely at the top of the priority list for European defense and security interests to push that program forward!
I think it slipped my mind and merged with the Tiger in my head, idk but yes absolutely the AW249 is massively important I shouldn’t have missed it lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Helicopters_AW249_Fenice
The AW249 is a worthy response to the AH-64, it only falls short in not having quite the same payload weight capacity but it is similar enough.
Edit I am having trouble confirming the AW249 has a Longbow equivalent radar? If it doesn’t the AW249 is not anywhere near the same kind of aircraft as the AH-64 Apache. I expect the AW249 will have this capacity but it is an extremely important detail.
Doesn’t matter.
We agree on importance and that the Airbus H145M is a joke. If CAS is needed German Bundeswehr must hope for the Poles, Brits or Americans to be around.
Edit: I hope Germany opts for the Leonardo helo, too.
The thing that makes the H145M not a joke is the Lakota is the trainer helicopter for the Apache so Germany could always sidestep into the Apache if European attack helicopter programs fail, but I agree yes it is a light helicopter repurporsed as an attack helicopter because the people in charge won’t think they want an attack helicopter until they desperately need them.
I bet it will excel in light reconnaissance roles. The electronics and the instrument will be top notch.
Also, working from a stand off distance might work. But it is not hardened and the smallest AA or manpad will hunt it down.
https://www.heliopsmag.com/antares/articles/lakota-scouting-for-a-role/
Yeah the quote I pulled will age like milk and Germany will be inveitably forced to restart the process of acquiring actual attack helicopters in the future. Like yes… helicopters are useful when used like that but they are more useful when they are attack helicopters designed from the ground up through and through.
Not having a turret mounted direct fire weapon alone is potentially an alarming weakness to swarms of UAVs, if anything I would think militaries would desperately be trying to add turreted machine guns and lasers to helicopters not pursuing helicopters without them designed in from the get go…
Does the Fenice have the capability to mount a radar like the Longbow? I thought I saw they don’t have plans for that but I am having trouble confirming either way. If not that also seems absurdly shortsighted to me. The longbow radar is literally the most essential element of the recipe for a AH-64 or AH-1Z, I hope they don’t shoot themselves in the foot and not include a similar system on the AW249.
For anyone else who is curious this is a good review of the various different attack helicopter programs, I certainly needed it lol things are moving so fast.
https://euro-sd.com/2023/04/articles/30737/attack-helicopters-21st-century-combat-systems/
Also see this article for info on AW249
https://www.edrmagazine.eu/leonardo-unveils-the-aw249-fenice-the-new-italian-army-combat-helicopter
To be fair: they always said it is a stopgap solution. They had NATO obligations to meet and neither the budget nor the time was there to acquire something else. They took a look at the Apache and Cobra-family in the process and decided to go cheap.
Let’s see what the next round brings up.
Idk I guess I just see this from the perspective of US attack helicopter acquisition woes where the Air Force and Navy really didn’t want the Army to have an air platform for targetting and radar that could interface with ground units and coordinate targetting, reconnaissance, artillery fires and attack but could also organically operate with land armies out of unprepared conditions and be brought along with a ground army to be used as a launch platform for large amounts of guided and unguided munitions.
The way the politics of these things tend to bear out is ‘Air Forces’ and ‘Navies’ see the integration of such a fully capable fullstack warfighting asset in ‘Armies’ as a threat because it can do everything all the way from high level decisionmaking assigning targets to friendly assets over networked secure connections while observing with the Longbow radar down to physically flying up to a target and blowing it up after a friendly soldier on the ground essentially makes eye contact with the helicopter pilot, points and yells THERE BLOW THAT THING UP.
I think this is also why we have seen Ukraine so radically transform the battlefield with innovations in UAVs, these kinds of crossings between air power and land armies are always frought with politics and lots of “Hey that is my turf!” nonsense and ultimately it ends up very poorly positioning militaries to fight organic, dynamic conflicts where air support is critical, messy and not delineated cleanly between seperate institutions of a military fighting together. Ukraine bypassed that internal struggle and proceeded directly to making the best use of organic air assets working in close coordination with a land army as possible and the results are unarguably decisive.
My point is these kind of conditions tend to lead to militaries continually acquiring light helicopters while pretending they don’t need a heavy attack helicopter with advanced long range radar, targetting and data sharing capacity until they are forced to confront reality at which point they start the process of considering an attack helicopter that could fully encapsulate all those functions… and then back away because politically that is a perceived as a threat to the jobs of the Air Force and Navy the Army looking to acquire attack helicopters is connected to. Rinse repeat.
TL;DR Close Air Support is political as fuck along internal vectors of politics within military institutions.