Helicopter Replacements?
Okay i know there are plenty of threads on here recently about the various orders and lack of airframes.
But as of January 2007 the British Forces had the following (together with their Out of Service Date)
It just shows an insight of what we have and won't have.
112 x British Army Lynx AH7/9 and 73 x Royal Navy Lynx HAS3/HMA8 with an OSD of 2012. Total of 185 (+/- a few)
To be replaced with 70 x Future Lynx, 40 for the British Army, 30 for the Royal Navy. This is costing over £1bn.
So, the £1.2Bn going towards the new MAN 4x4 and 6x6 utility trucks to replace the Bedford 4 tonner (and other variants - a lot of which are still going well) could have gone towards another 75 Future Lynx to bring the replacements back up to 145 atleast... still short of the replacement order but better than 70!
44 (ish) x Puma HC1 of the RAF with an OSD of 2010. We currently have no replacement on order as i am aware of. It's now nearing 2008 so why haven't the MoD pulled their finger out for an urgent requirement?
115 x Gazelle AH1 of the British Army with an OSD of 2018. These are dwindling already with some Gazelles being replaced i believe by the Lynx AH7 in the Scout role. So what helicopters are filling the gaps for the Lynx?
We currently have no replacement on order for the Gazelles either.
33 (ish) x Seaking HC4/6 with the Royal Navy with an OSD of 2012. We currently have no replacements on order. We have 4 years left to acquire it.
4 x Agusta 109 of the British Army for the SAS. OSD of 2008. We currently have no replacement on order for next year.
6 (ish) x Lynx AH7 of the Royal Marines. OSD of i take it the same as the Army airframes. No replacement on order, and no replacement on order for the Gazelles they lost either.
34 x Chinook HC2 with an OSD of 2015. We currently have no replacement for these on order. We have 6 more HC2A's downgraded from HC3 standard which have been sitting in a hangar for 8 years and they still haven't been re-configured, this will take a few years. OSD for these will be 2025.
I have left out the Merlin HM1 and HC3/HC3A as these won't be mothballed until atleast 2030.