Here we are.....yet another looming disaster of a procurement process.

I love the description...."investment" for the decision process.

The simple answer remains buying off the shelf Sikorsky Blackhawks with a completion centre in Blighty and for once....just once....don't screw it up.

You have Apache and Chinook fleets....why not Blackhawks?

All this has shown is a collective nose cutting just to spite some faces....and perhaps just not being able to afford to replace the Puma with anything.

Is the economy and resulting Defense Budget drawing from an rapidly decreasing national purse?

I have seen firsthand the excellent quality of British workmanship in doing rebuilding and modifying helicopters when the money is thrown at the project.

I flew several different types that had been done by a commercial operator that when done....were better than the original aircraft prior to the overhaul and update.

Is that capability no longer in existence?

Side note is I also saw the negative effect of refusing to spend that kind of money needed to do the job right and to those same high standards.

SASless, the UK government has a fantasy belief in export generated jobs and income flowing from NMH. How this a more sustainable idea for AW 149, given PZL-Świdnik, than it is for Blackhawk, given PZL Mielec, is a good question. Given a lot of materiel for UK has to be sourced from the US, in the political climate engendered by the current POTUS appearing to buy UK/European is a significant element in the decision.

Having watched the CDS Rich Knighton's evidence to the HoC Defence Select Committee yesterday, I got the feeling that, however much he personally thinks NMH is essential, the ongoing arguments negotiations over the Defence Equpment Plan are likely to result in a reduced budget for the programme and fewer airframes being acquired.

Yeovil was a completions facility in 2015 for our SAR 189's, (149 same thing painted green). The minister for transport of the era for SARH/UKSAR, Philip Hammond, mandated 189 to satisfy a 'built in UK' narrative. But they may have had blades fitted in Yeovil and no more. Also exports could have started then, why was that production line closed if it was ever even opened?
The earliest of the airframes was test flown in Italy, you don't need to be a rocket scientist here.
Also as has been rightly highlighted, no way could such a vast quantity of the labour force rely on such a small element of the fleet. The many recent media articles highlight the contradiction of UK company, versus Italian bosses in Italy making the threats, claimed impacts that are inherently artificial.
The UK taxpayer was taken to the cleaners on lynx mk10 also.

well that shows a staggering level of ignorance of both the CG 189 procurement and the work share between UK and italy on the 149/189 programme, but after all this is a rumour network...

especially when you consider some Bristow workforce were sat in the aircraft, in Italy, to ensure ‘marinisation’ was at least attempted whilst they were being constructed…..

Those of us who are in the commercial network of the larger operators gain our info from experience, operational and during aircraft acceptance, such experience shapes our opinion. Many of the intro team for 189 to SARH/UKSAR remain in Aberdeen today. Their first hand accounts also matter.
Happy to be corrected so I welcome your corrections, no matter how small. Instead of a quick one liner, please elaborate. I am more than happy to stand corrected.

Meantime, back in the real world...

UK to order Black Hawks instead of AW149s?

14-Jan-2026

Source: HeliHub.com

There is a lot of rather frantic activity in the UK surrounding the NMH New Military Helicopter program.

Having originally announced an interest in up to 44 helicopters to replace a variety of platforms (Puma, Bell 212, Bell 412 and Dauphin), a later revision bringing the number down to “22-30” ultimately led Airbus Helicopters withdrawing their H175M offering and Sikorsky removing their Black Hawk from consideration. A further 22+ months on and UK Government appears nowhere nearer confirming the AW149 order from Leonardo, and late 2025 this resulted Roberto Cingolani, chief executive of Leonardo, writing a letter to the Government warning that his company’s Yeovil factory risks closure without the order being confirmed. This would affect around 3,000 jobs directly, and approximately a further 7,000 from the supply chain and local organisations that rely on the spending power of employees.

While there may be contractual reasons for preferring manufacture in the UK, it is of course feasible that Leonardo could outsource the production of AW149s for the UK military to its plant at Swidnik in Poland. That location – which has built approximately double the number of helicopters over the years compared to the plant at Yeovil – is currently building AW149s for its own local military, following a small initial batch delivered from Yeovil. Lots of questions have been asked in the UK Parliament in London, particularly by Adam Dance, the local Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, in whose constituency the Leonardo factory lies. However, there has been a distinct lack of response from the Government, led by the Labour Party. Transcripts of responses from Luke Pollard, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, are not only inconclusive but also give no reassurance either on a commitment to the site at Yeovil.

Concerns have also been raised over the future of the deal following previous delays on the contract award decision. Adam Dance has also stated that “It is clear that the current bid will not be sustainable past March of this year.”, referring to the monetary amounts being quoted. Delays into Q2 and beyond would requite Leonardo to raise their offered price. Yesterday, another party threw a grenade into the mix by claiming that the UK Government really wants to order Black Hawks from Sikorsky, a division of Lockheed Martin. Reform UK Deputy leader Richard Tice asked: “Can the Minister confirm whether the rumours are true that one reason for the delay in the medium-lift helicopter is that there has been a rearguard action in the Army to buy US Black Hawks instead?”. He added: “If he will not give a timeline for the Defence Investment Plan, will he at least confirm that it will include a medium-lift helicopter—yes or no?” The question followed reports that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer ordered a delay to the upcoming Defence Investment Plan (DIP), a detailed framework setting out UK defence spending on infrastructure and equipment. It had been set for December 2025 release, but is now not expected until March 2026 at the earliest.

Read more at https://www.helihub.com/2026/01/14/u...ead-of-aw149s/

"We have to re-arm fast": Leonardo helicopter factory faces uncertain future
Ed Davey has brought up the subject in parliament

Anyone who operates a Leonardo aircraft will tell you about their woeful parts supply performance. Whilst it might also be the same story for AH, it rarely manifests itself into SAR flights being grounded! What does that tell you about how the chain from Italy is managed/regarded? Snake Oil Salesmen......

Do you think Lockheed Martin would be any better?

That's a valid question, crab, in terms of what the cost of the support package amounts to.
Every major manufacturer has issues with supply chains, and LM (who now owns Sikorsky) isn't immune to that. Granted, they have a warm production line for the UH-60M at the moment (and in Poland the S-70i line is also warm) so you could argue, or even expect, that they'd be able to make adjustments without having to restart anything in terms of long lead orders for certain materials.

Could.

With that said, the devil is in the details. How all of that would be worked out isn't what makes headlines.

And how much confidence does the UK have dealing with America right now?

Since this isn’t Jet Blast I won’t comment too heavily on the hand wringing about what havoc the evil orange man could wreak on parts supplies/support for a hypothetical Lockheed Martin award for this program.

In reality, It benefits the whole UH-60 fleet every time someone else adopts the aircraft, but let’s be honest, it mostly helps the US military industrial base. Keeping production lines hot for spares as well as new production aircraft, which in turn keeps thousands of people employed in Congressional districts across the entire country. The Donald would face issues with his own party even attempting moves that would affect those jobs.

The UH-60 production line in the US should be running til 2032 I think with current orders, more orders means more time for the production line to stay open. I haven’t seen any information about the Polish production line.

On top of that, there will probably efforts at overhauling the UH-60M fleet (Army used to call it RECAP on the A/L fleets when the wars were on) in the next decade that will coincide with whatever modernization effort the Army decides to tackle while the MV-75 program (theoretically) advances.

The Army is meeting with industry this month on UH-60 modernization, a RECAP of the UH-60M should also keep production of spares flowing for many years.

But, since LM withdrew from puma replacement, probably due to concerns about how the UK government was handling the process(or how they plan to pay for it with no money), unless something changes we will probably never find out if they have better support than AW or AH.

FltMech

I don't know, it probably varies with whomever in the UK one is speaking to, but something has become evident in the past year: there is a willingness in the US to keep the sales of arms/aircraft/et al to various European nations.
With that comes the chance for profit, and I'll say with a modest amount of experience in a couple of previous jobs that L/M is keen to make money.
We have already discussed, upthread, their choice to bail out of the proposal/program. The UK at one point had entertained LM being a part of the answer (or at least an option) but LM didn't like the shape/form of the deal.
60FltMech covered the other points that I was going to make.

Without the West buying these products the cost to the US customers will skyrocket as less orders mean higher costs, I can see some lines that cannot sustain the lower production rates closing, Trumps Tariffs will not help either, in a World where parts are sourced around the globe the costs involved will also sky rocket, the tariff's on car manufacture, Aluminum production and trading with a heavily tariffed Canada has shown that, and the West have naturally shied away from US military products with the worry that the US could potentially dictate their use in any future conflict.

Its not looking good

From what I read on this forum, support for the commercial S-92 fleet hasn't been great when it comes to MGB supply. I haven't read about any similar issues for UH-60s despite apparent commonality between some of the dynamic components. More and more used UH-60's are now entering the commercial market.

Could some of that commonality be the root of the problem? If there are shared UH-60 and S-92 parts and there are DPAS-rated DOD orders that effectively get to cut in line with respect to any non-DPAS rated commercial orders.

I have seen this a fair bit, both at another OEM, but also in ordering from avionics providers for customization jobs, where they had to fill DOD orders before they could allocate parts to us.

I was similarly thinking military operators may get priority over commercial (along with a larger profit margin on anything supplied to the military!), but in the case of the S-92 MGB, Google AI indicates:

"The initial design of the S-92 attempted to use existing H-60 propulsion, but this was too limited for the larger, 19-passenger S-92 cabin. The S-92 requires a higher capacity gearbox to handle its increased gross weight and power."

So commonality seemingly isn't the issue in that case. My sense from what has been written elsewhere on PPRuNe is that operators likely didn't maintain sufficient spare MGB stock holdings themselves (hardly a cheap item to have sitting on a shelf) and Sikorsky hadn't maintained sufficient supplies to meet the running demand either. But I can see a situation where some military operators (US DoD) would get priority over other military operators (eg: UK, Europe) for parts supply unless support contracts have very stringent/harsh penalty clauses included.

I don't think there is any commonality between the two types. Operators do not typically have spare MGBs sitting in stores - they are over a million USD each.

LM took over SIK at a time of declining civil sales (oil price crash in s2015/2016) and also they have a much larger military sales portfolio than SIK ever had, including missiles and the F35. So, the S92 revenues in the overall scale of things is tiny. LM just announced a 194 Billion USD backlog, 2.5 annual sales, for 2025.

The spares issues became so bad that operators were breaking low time S92's for spares. That is around 10,000 hrs. Given that the Super Pumas and S61's made over 25,000 before being moved on to other operators.