Providing value for money and efficiency

Australian Aerospace assembles and supports the MRH90 and ARH Tiger in Australia. The MRH90 is the army version of the NH90.

Although designed to perform different roles, the NH90 and ARH machines share commonalities that deliver efficiencies and economies-of-scale in production, use and ongoing support.

Australian Aerospace is able to support the Australian Government’s goal of helicopter fleet rationalisation in the armed forces.

Operations – man-machine interface

Both the NH90 and ARH Tiger are designed to operate autonomously in rugged conditions from unprepared pads or from ships.

The NH90 and ARH Tiger also were designed to cope with similar threats and are fitted with identical Electronic Warfare Systems (EWS) embedding missile launch detector, radar warning receiver, laser warning receiver and chaff and flares dispenser. The EWS will be in the Australian inventory with the ARH Tiger.

The two helicopters are fitted with other identical equipment, such as:

• the helmet-mounted sight/display from Sextant
• the Eurogrid Battlefield Management system which updates the tactical data on a digital map display.

Both helicopter systems have benefited from the same approach of integrated working groups of end users and industry to design and optimise the man-machine interface, using computer-aided simulations and full-flight simulators.

Technology

ARH Tiger and NH90 were developed in near parallel time frames. Their designs exploit the same technologies:

• extensive use of carbon/matrix composites for structural and some dynamic components, up to around 90% for both aircraft
• use of SARIB technology to suppress vibration
• system architecture where basic avionics and mission equipments are each integrated around a separate independent 1553B-type digital data bus
• identical hardware for all main computers of MRH90 and ARH Tiger
• on-condition maintenance concepts
• extensive built-in-test for component monitoring.