Both MRH 90 and ARH Tiger have been designed to operate autonomously in rugged conditions from unprepared pads or from ships.

The MRH 90 and ARH Tiger were also designed to cope with the same threats and they are fitted with an identical Electronic Warfare System (EWS) embedding missile launch detector, radar warning receiver, laser warning receiver and chaff & flares dispenser. The EWS will be in the Australian inventory with the ARH Tiger.

The two helicopters also share other identical equipment like:

• The Helmet Mounted Sight/Display from Sextant
• The Eurogrid Battlefield Management system that updates the tactical data on a digital map display.

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

2. Technology

ARH Tiger and MRH 90 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, to the extent of 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 MRH 90 and Tiger
• on-condition maintenance concepts
• extensive built-in-test for component monitoring.