Originally Posted by
rattman
I dont think it political pressure, Its just that euro choppers have straight out never matched the US. Australia replacing tiger with apache and the RAN is replacing its 6 MRH-90 with seahawks either R or S's
rattman you may be right but I understand there was suspicion of pressure from Trump in the Korean press.
The RoKN bought Wildcat for its batch one Maritime Operational Helicopter program when it beat the MH-60R in open competion. For batch 2 the Seahawk wasn't even in the initial bidding, LM and NH dropped out leaving Leonardo as the winner. After the deadline an FMS based proposal for MH-60Rs was put forward and the competion reopened. Granted there may have been improvements in sensor suite and armaments proposed but the MH-60R was substantially more expensive, had lost against the Wildcat before and requires redesign of the ships that will use it to allow operations. Ironically the restriction of what Korea could specified through an FMS as opposed to a direct sale was supposed to have been one of the reasons Wildcat won batch 1. Trump tweeted at least twice lauding Korean financial contribution to mutual defence at the time the decision in favour of Seahawk was announced.
The apparent anti-military political environment in many European countries means EU protectionism doesn't appear to extend to an FMS style support to Miltary exports and even before Brexit they lacked a capacity to provide the indirect subsidies inherent to FMS on anything like the scale of the US. Even less so the direct subsidies.