Boeing and Airbus team up to bid for UK military's helicopter contract

Published by

Peter Davison

Rival aerospace firms Boeing and Oxford Airport-based Airbus Helicopters have teamed up to bid for a UK government contract that would provide helicopters for the Royal Air Force and British Army.

As training services partner, Boeing Defence UK will provide aircrew, groundcrew and maintenance training, if the super-medium class Airbus H175M, to be built at Broughton in Wales, is selected to replace the Airbus Puma HC2.

The company joins a UK-based industry team created to offer, supply and support the British-built H175M which includes some of the most respected players in international aerospace.

Managing Director of Airbus Helicopters in the UK, Lenny Brown, said: “Boeing Defence UK is rightly respected in this country for its long-standing support of the British Chinook and Apache fleets.

"As training services partner it completes a rock-solid line-up of UK-based first tier aerospace partners who bring a guarantee of world-class service provision to the UK Ministry of Defence for decades to come.”

“We are delighted to collaborate with Airbus and join their innovative team of aerospace leaders to meet the UK’s New Medium Helicopter requirement”, said Steve Burnell, managing director of Boeing Defence UK.

“Our local team has supported the British armed forces for decades, sustaining hundreds of jobs across the country in helicopter training. As a member of the H175M Task Force, we look forward to leveraging our current expertise to ensure availability and readiness for the UK’s future helicopter fleets.”

Launched at last year's Royal International Air Tattoo in Gloucestershire, the H175M Task Force also includes Plymouth-based defence and helicopter specialist Babcock fulfilling the critical role of support partner for the H175M in UK service at military operating locations.

Martin Baker, at Denham, Middlesex, with more than 70 years of aerospace experience, is providing specialist troop seating and cabin integration services.

In Belfast, Northern Ireland and Prestwick, Scotland Spirit AeroSystems, already an Airbus partner on the CityAirbus NextGen eVTOL aircraft, has begun extensive detailed design and manufacturing activities on the H175M.

In addition, Pratt & Whitney Canada, is formally partnering in the team for which it supplies and supports the highly reputed PT6C-67E turboshaft engines from its market leading family of powerplants.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.