BELFAST — The German Navy received its first NH90 Sea Tiger helicopter delivery at Nordholz air station today, in what the service hopes will mark significant uplift in anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare capability.
Airbus Helicopters handed over the aircraft on behalf of joint venture NH Industries (NHI), manufacturer of the rotorcraft, as part of a ceremony to mark the occasion. (With Airbus, Leonardo and GKN Fokker are the other parties that make up NHI.)
In all the German Navy is set to acquire 31 of the new helicopters, also known as the NH90 Multi-Role Frigate Helicopter (MRFH), with deliveries set to be completed by the end of the decade.
“The North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea is our playground where we have to fight against enemy submarines, and this is our major role — fighting enemy submarines,” Cpt. Broder Nielsen, commander of German naval aviation Nordholz, told Breaking Defense and other media on Monday as part of an Airbus Helicopters briefing ahead of the Sea Tiger delivery.
“Therefore, we introduced a couple of weeks ago, the first [Boeing] P-8 [Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft] and now the Sea Tiger, and we need those aircraft … faster. But we are in good communication with NHI and we achieved already a speed up in the delivery program,” he said.
As part of the briefing, NHI President Axel Aloccio said, “The German Navy will have the best of what’s available from the NH90 [product line] and I would even say the best from what’s available in the entire worldwide market for this type of machine.” He also noted that another two Sea Tigers will be delivered to Berlin “hopefully at the end of this week.”
The twin engine rotorcraft is the most modern version of the NH90 NATO Frigate Helicopter (NFH) and is under order to replace the German Navy’s Mk88A Sea Lynx fleet. Additionally, the service operates 18 NH90 Sea Lion naval transport helicopters primarily for maritime search and rescue missions.
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“Since we do not have any fast jets anymore, that is for the last two decades, we haven’t shot any missiles against surface vessels, so, this [Sea Tiger acquisition] will be a big improvement of our capacity,” Nielsen told reporters. “We intend to introduce also in the P-8 stand-off missiles against surface vessels, also on the Sea Tiger.”
The helicopter will be weaponized with MBDA-made MARTE Extended Range (ER) anti-surface warfare missiles, French-Italian MU90 lightweight torpedoes and Belgian M3M machine guns. It will also be equipped with a dipping sonar and sonarbuoys.
Embarkation tasks, as part of an operational test and evaluation phase, are set to begin next year, added Nielsen, noting that in the “summer” a first Sea Tiger was deployed to Nordholz to operate with German Navy pilots and NHI crew in the North Sea.
“I was part of that, and I could see how the integration with Frigate 125 worked out. It worked out pretty well,” he said.