Page 28 - Australian Defence Magazine Feb 2020

28 AIRPOWER HELICOPTERS
FEBRUARY 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
missiles, but it also has an enhanced version of the Turbo- meca Rolls-Royce MTR390 engine, which confers about 14 per cent more power.
Thirty-six surviving Tigre HAPs are currently being brought up to HAD standard by Airbus Helicopters in Marignane, near Marseille, and the work is expected to be completed by 2024. The entire fleet is also
Brice (their surnames have been withheld for security rea- sons), have extensive experience of all combat deployments. Tiger is a lighter helicopter than the Apache (6 tonnes versus 10 tonnes) and it has been criticised for not provid- ing the same level of capability, but Captain Teddy said op- erational experience has shown the two helicopters to be
being upgraded to Standard 2 configura- tion (also known as Mk.2, more of which later) and a Standard 3 (Mk.3) upgrade is now in the de-risking phase.
“ON AFGHAN OPERATIONS, THE FRENCH TIGRES OPERATED CLOSELY WITH THE US ARMY APACHE UNITS.”
evenly matched.
“In Afghanistan we were embed-
ded with a (US Army) Apache patrol, where we might fly the first two hours and they would relieve us and then we would come back, so it was quite simple for us to judge the performance of the two helicopters,” he said. “At the begin- ning of each mission we had to check
Two ‘standard’ ALAT regiments oper-
ate the Tigre: 1e RHC at Phalsbourg and
5e RHC at Pau in the south-west of the
country and in addition it is operated by
4e Régiment d'Hélicoptères des Forces Spéciales (Special Forces Helicopter Regiment), also based at Pau.
in with the JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller) on the ground and we had to state our payload and playtime (mission endurance) in the area – and we couldn’t lie, because it was operational task data.
“We heard the Apache pilots giving all this information too and it was exactly the same as ours – exactly the same payload, exactly the same playtime – so we were not inferior to the Apache patrol, we provided exactly the same service to the troops on the ground.”
The Tigre was withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2013 but almost at the same time, the French Government an- nounced it would deploy the helicopter to Mali. In between 2009 and 2013 however, ALAT Tigres were deployed on
AFGHANISTAN
The Tigre was first deployed to Afghanistan and began op- erations in July 2009, operating from Kabul in support of French and coalition forces in the region. On operations the French helicopters also operated closely with US Army Apache units.
Because the ALAT is a relatively small organisation, personnel are frequently deployed overseas and the two officers ADM spoke with in Phalsbourg, Captain Teddy, a patrol leader, and Chief of Operations Lieutenant Colonel
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