I suspect that some of the buy will be swing roll so that they can serve in any of the services. There has been some grousing that the navy has more nice Shiney Merlins than it has ships currently and very few of them are suitable to deploy to hot sunny places. Also I am certain that there was something that I saw a couple of years ago that suggested that all future UK helicopters would be supplied fully marinised so that they could serve at sea.

If a programme on BBC3 or 4 gets better than expected viewers then they will re-run it later on 1 or 2. Richard Wilsons current series on Drives around the UK was on 3 or 4 previously but is being repeated on BBC2. There was also a programme about a steam train last year that got such unexpectedltyl good viewers on BBC4 it was put on BBC2 within a few weeks.

So if its any good it might appear later

RE the Aw149, I agree with what most folks are suggesting that it has to be a candidate if there is a split purchase with more Merlins. There hasn’t been too much published about its spec, but one thing that does jump out is that its payload apparently isn’t as good as a Puma or a Sea King by about 1-1.25 tonnes, which in rotory wing terms is quite a lot which I think is what Distiller was hinting at in his earlier post. Is that likely to be a major factor in any decision ? Presumably there is a single piece of underslung kit that the Army have in mind that it ‘must’ be able to move with the winning design ?

The NH-90 seems to have similar lift capabilities to the later spec Puma’s and SK and is of course quite a success with a significant number sold. I don’t think it can be ruled out completely if there is a competition.

The rain or hail flooding the engines is also unlikely. Engines are now tested for this and a truly enormous amount of water is run through them on a test rig, apparently its much more than they would ever likely see in flight even in the worst conditions.

Agreed, crunching the numbers only gives the naval designers an estimate as to speed. The first Type 45 for example is being reported as being faster than the design estimates, yet there have been other ships that have noteably underperformed compared to their paper spec. Thats one of the reasons that the best design teams spend so long in the test tanks with their models to reduce the risk of underperformance of any of the multiple performance goals that they want to attain.

Over the horizon radar is still pretty experimental and has been for about 50 years. I was told by someone who used to work on long range radar many years ago that are major technical, atmospheric and environmental challenges that still make it very tricky even with modern electronics.

I think the only country that has any publicised and ongoing capability in this area is Australia although the French were supposedly working on something a few years ago

Well said Shamrock