LONDON — In the lead up to the 2017 Paris Air Show, European giant Airbus has revealed details of its two-stage proposal to upgrade the Australian Army’s Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopter.
The managing director of Airbus Group Australia Pacific, Tony Fraser, said Airbus Helicopters is proposing an interim upgrade based on the Tiger Mark 2 development being mulled by European operators, including France. Beyond that, Fraser says a Mark 3 variant now on the drawing board will form the basis of a future armed reconnaissance helicopter, or ARH, replacement program flagged by the Australian government for the middle of the next decade.
Australia has 22 Tigers and was to undertake an extensive capability assurance program, or CAP, to keep the fleet relevant in the coming years. However, the ARH program has been mired in controversy since the first helicopters were delivered at the end of 2004, suffering a lower-than-expected rate of effort and a higher-than-desired cost of ownership to the commonwealth.
Australia's 2016 Defence White Paper and the associated Integrated Investment Program singled the helicopter out from all Australian Defence Force platforms for criticism, describing the program as "troubled."
Most recently, a 2017 report by the Australian National Audit Office, or ANAO, into the ARH program was scathing of the helicopter, which only achieved final operational capability last year, despite being in operational service for more than a decade.
The program is now seven years late, and although it hasn’t reached planned levels of availability and reliability, recent remediation efforts by the Australian Army; the Defence Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group of Australia's Defence Department, or CASG; and industry continue to improve performance indicators to the point where the Tiger’s cost of ownership has dropped by almost a third since 2012.
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I don’t get how come Australians have so many problems with they Tiger. France had over 90% availability in Afghanistan and had also very good serviceability when deployed abroad. The Tiger is easy to maintain, the French are doing it directly in the field.
BalasHapusFrench also deploy Tiger on a regular basis on their ships, without any problems, Tiger flew 220 hours in Libya from their LHD. Maybe the Australian assembly is the problem.
Concerning its effectiveness, France is very happy with it, and they are using it a lot in Africa and used it also extensively in Libya, where 40% of the targets destroyed by the coalition were destroyed by helicopters and 90% of those strikes where conducted by Gazelle and Tiger Helicopters. I think even the Australians pilots are satisfied now.
It makes me laugh when people talk about replacing it by Apache wich is a hell to maintain and way to heavy for Australia, I’ve read that they want to replace it with something actually smaller because the Tiger would be overkill.
We'll we should also consider that Politics within Aussie Armed Forces is already been active although they can spend or buy any expensive military machines if they want.
Unlike SINGAPORE which is the most the unrealistic country pretending to be good and powerful within their Asian neighbor which is in reality, this tiny Country produce the most LOW Quality Military Toy worst than their counterpart and look a like Malnourish and Mongoloid people.
sinkie kena jerebu....semua weapon jadi fail
HapusMaybe it's a supply-chain problem. They may have had problems getting parts from the other side of the world. Especially when it comes to cost.
HapusAlso noticed they wanted compatibility with US systems for their subs. They never said NATO compatibility. So perhaps they just don't work as well with the system they currently have.
Kesian malaysia tak de attack helicopter
BalasHapuskesian malaysie tak de wang beli tiger...jom donation
BalasHapus