£300m RAF Puma Helicopter Upgrades

The MoD signed a deal worth £300 million on Tuesday 29th September for the upgrade of a number of helicopters serving within the rotary component of the Royal Air Force - Joint Helicopter Command. Under the terms of the deal, a minimum of 28 RAF Puma helicopters will receive boosted avionics and improved engines, and the first reworked Puma is scheduled to be operational in 2011. According to the main contractor involved, Eurocopter UK, about 13 more will have followed it by 2012, and the remaining Puma upgrades, two years after that.

RAF Puma Fleet

A number of other firms will also be involved in upgrading the RAF Puma fleet besides Eurocopter: UK defence firm QinetiQ, French group Thales and US firm Rockwell Collins, along with Chelton, Selex Sensors and Airborne Systems and Smiths.

The upgrades will change the designation of these 28 or so Pumas from HC.1s to HC2s. £220 million of the overall cost will provide the helicopters with state-of-the-art cockpit technology and hi-tech communications technology. With these in place - along with a pair of new Turbomeca engines that promise a 35 per cent performance boost - the Puma's anticipated OSD (Out-of-Service Date) will be extended by a decade, according to Eurocopter. The new engines will also make RAF Pumas 25 per cent more fuel efficient than before, according to the MoD.

The Puma resulted out of one of a series of Anglo-French helicopter collaborations in the late 1960s. The type has served with the RAF since 1971 and examples are based with two squadrons at two principal sites: RAF Aldergrove and RAF Benson.

RAF Puma Upgrades

News of the RAF Puma upgrades came swift on the heels of an announcement earlier in September concerning another rotary type in RAF service - the Boeing Chinook. As detailed by Quentin Davis - UK Minister for Defence Equipment and Support - RAF Chinooks deployed in Afghanistan will also receive engines and avionics upgrades. The impact of the new engines in particular will give operational Chinooks greater endurance, while so-called 'glass cockpits' will facilitate front line operations in Afghanistan, where the dusty conditions often make flying difficult.

Joint Helicopter Command unifies the rotary assets and military personnel serving with all three strands of the British armed forces - the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and British Army.

See also:

New RAF Chinook Helicopter's First Flight

RAF Merlin Helicopters Train for Afghan Deployment