Page 26 - Australian Defence Magazine Feb 2020

26 AIRPOWER HELICOPTERS
FEBRUARY 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
TIGER IN COMBAT – FRENCH ARMY EXPERIENCE IN AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST
The first retrofitted HAD Tigre was delivered to the French Army in December 2017.
While Australia’s Tiger Armed Reconnaissance helicopters have been deployed overseas just twice in their 15-year operational history, their French Army equivalents have been continually deployed on combat operations for more than 10 years now.
NIGEL PITTAWAY | PHALSBOURG AND MELBOURNE
THE two ARH deployments were both for exercises, first- ly to Papua New Guinea in August 2015 for work with the PNG Defence Force, and most recently to Malaysia aboard an RAAF C-17, where they embarked aboard Navy LHD HMAS Canberra last year for Indo-Pacific Endeav- our (IPE) 2019.
The Tigre (French spelling) is the spearhead of French Army aviation (ALAT - Aviation Légère de l'Armée de Terre) and first deployed to Afghanistan in mid-2009. Today it is flying daily combat missions over the deserts of Mali.
To learn more about French combat experience with the Tiger over the past decade, ADM visited Phalsbourg, west of Strasbourg and home to ALAT’s 1st Helicopter Regiment (1e RHC - Régiment d'Hélicoptères de Combat).
TIGRE OVERVIEW
The French Army currently operates two versions of the Ti- gre but an upgrade program currently underway will result in commonality across the entire fleet.
The baseline version is the Tigre HAP (Hélicoptère d'Appui Protection), which is capable of employing 68mm rockets and the Mistral air to air missile, as well as the 30mm chain gun in the nose. Australia’s ARH was devel- oped from this baseline aircraft, but with a laser designa- tion capability added to the Safran Strix sight, which allows the use of Hellfire II missiles.
The second French variant is the Tigre HAD (Hélicop- tère d'Appui Destruction), which is similar to the ARH in that it has laser designation capability and Hellfire II
AIRBUS