Country of origin:

International

Description:

Armed reconnaissance helicopter

Power Plant:

Two 959 kw (1,285 shp) MTU/Rolls Royce Turbomeca MTR 390 turboshafts

Specifications:

Armament:

One 30 mm cannon in turret with 450 rounds; four Mistral air-to-air missiles; two packs containing 22 Bristol 68 mm rockets; HOT or Hellfire missiles

History:

Known as the “Aussie Tiger”, the Eurocopter Tiger in late 2001 was named by the Australian Government as the winner of the Air 87 program to supply the Australian Army with 22 armed reconnaissance helicopters. As part of the plan, an Australian industry package was agreed upon, with, amongst other things, wiring harnesses and tail booms for all production Tigers to be built in Australia.

The Australian machine (known as the Giat 30.781) was based on the HAP model, which was in production for the French Army, the weapons to be installed on the machines to be determined during contract negotiation. Prototype of the series F-ZWWW (c/n PT-1) flew on 27April 1991, the second F-ZWWY (c/n PT-2) flying on 22 April 1993.

Crew was two, a pilot in front and a co-pilot / gunner in the rear. Eighty per cent of the structure was composite materials. The rotor was a rigid hingeless unit, the four-blade fibre elastomeric rotor having 24 parts. The Australian model had a 30 mm cannon under the nose, a roof-mounted sight, and provision for underwing rocket pods and anti-tank capability.

In 1998 a prototype F-ZWWU (c/n PT-4), which was flown on 15 December 1994, was brought to Australia for demonstration to the Australian Army and, whilst performing night flying near Townsville in Queensland on 17 February, crashed and was extensively damaged.

Power was provided by new generation turboshaft engines jointly developed by BMW in Germany, Rolls Royce in Britain, and Turbomeca in France. In desert operations the aircraft had no sand filter as it had been designed to cope with sand and foreign object ingestion. The manufacturers stated the filter fitted could ingest 140 kg (308 lb) of sand over ten hours with a less than five per cent loss. The Tiger was being supplied in some numbers to the French and German military, having lost out to the Boeing Apache in the United Kingdom competition in 1995. The type had a low radar, thermal, acoustic and visual signature in the battlefield environment.

The first four Tigers were manufactured in France, the remaining 18 being assembled at the Australian Aerospace facility in Brisbane, QLD. Two Tigers A38-001 and A38-002 (c/ns ARH-1 and ARH-2) arrived in Brisbane on 24 November 2004 on board an Antonov An-124 of Volga-Dnepr (RA-82046). At that time the next two, A38-003 and A38-004 (c/ns ARH-3 and ARH-4) remained in France to finalise certification, and aircraft A38-005 to A38-011 (c/ns ARH-5 to ARH-11) were proceeding towards completion on the Australian assembly line.

The first two machines made their first official flights in Australia on 15 December 2004 when they were handed over to the Australian Defence Force. The first pilots course with the type commenced in July 2005, a fully operational capability with two trained squadrons based in Darwin, NT to be achieved by 2008. Tigers A38-003 and A38-004 were delivered to the Australian Aerospace facility at Brisbane on 30 May 2005 on board a chartered Antonov An-124; and the first Australian-built Tiger A38-005 (c/n ARH-5) made its first flight at the Australian Aerospace facility at Brisbane Airport on 17 December 2004.

The first machine A38-001 underwent trials at Woomera, SA commencing in May 2005 and ending in December for the surface missile test program with the Hellfire II anti-armour missile, the trials ending after a total of seven firings by day and night over a distance of up to 8 km (5 miles), three live warheads being fired. On 16 January 2006 an Antonov An-124-100 (RA-82047) of Volga-Dnepr Airlines delivered a simulator for the Australian Eurocopter EC-665 Tiger to Brisbane, this unit to be sited at Oakey for training purposes.

All Tigers, serials A38-001 (c/n 4001) to A38-022 (c/n 4022), had been completed and delivered by September 2011. A full-size replica of the Tiger was built as a simulator and was used for training air and ground crews in systems and maintenance of the aircraft.

The Tiger initially entered service in 2014 but by December 2015 the type had yet to achieve final operational capability, which had initially been planned for June 2009 and was re-scheduled to January 2016. Reports indicated that rather than go ahead with a planned mid-life upgrade under the Defence Capability Plan as AIR 87 Phase 3 Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter Assurance Program, the Tigers look set to be retired early, ie about 20 years after entering service. In the Defence White Paper released in January 2016 under “Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter replacement”, a program time frame for a replacement had been set down for a period of 2021 to 2030.

The Tiger achieved full operational capability on 18 April 2016, more than 11 years after the type entered service, becoming fully operational with a full Regiment of two Squadrons. The last machine A38-022 was delivered in late 2011. In June 2016 the machine’s capability was expanded when handling trials on the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) LHD Amphibious Assault Ship ‘HMAS Adelaide’ began whilst the ship was berthed in Brisbane, flight trials commencing at sea in early 2017.

Government acquisition was on the basis of a low-risk off-the-shelf platform but development of the type continued, and by mid 2016 the international fleet of the type had only reached 119 aircraft. In Australia a report of 1 September 2016 stated the Tiger fleet had not yet delivered the original capability expected and the program continued to produce higher than expected sustainment costs and lower than expected aircraft availability. On average only 3.5 aircraft of the operational fleet of 16 aircraft [22 were delivered] were serviceable at 10 am on any given day whereas the target was 12 aircraft. It further stated the acquisition of the type missed all but one of its scheduled milestones and final operational capability was seven years behind schedule.

In early 2017 it was announced the first Lockheed Martin AGM-114R Hellfire II Romeo laser-guided air-to-ground missile had been fired during testing by the Army Evaluation Section, with assistance from Airbus Group Australia Pacific, and No 1 Aviation Regiment at RAAF base Tindal in the Northern Territory. It was said the new missile was a great enhancement to the Hellfire system, the warhead being able to be either an explosive fragment or anti-tank weapon.

In May 2017 A38-001 became the first of the type to log 2,000 flying hours, reaching this time whilst on a flight from the Army Aviation Training Centre at Oakey, QLD to the Enoggera Gallipoli Barracks in Brisbane. This machine was the only one in the fleet fitted with specialist flight test instrumentation to enable data collection for aircraft and fleet management in Australian conditions, and to deal with weapons performance and flight envelopes.

Four of the aircraft from the 162 Reconnaissance Squadron were conveyed to Malaysia by RAAF C-17A in April 2019 and, after re-assembly, were flown on board ‘HMAS Canberra’ and subsequently took part in Indo Pacific Endeavour 19 in south-east Asian waters.  A number of pilots and ground crews were qualified in deck landing and shipboard operations.  They later remained on board the vessel on its return to Australia and took part in the United States – Australia Talisman Sabre exercises in July that year.