Leonardo Helicopters’ managing director Gian Piero Cutillo believes it would not be ”convenient for Europe” to buy military tiltrotors direct from the USA rather than developing its own capability if nations decide the architecture best meets their future rotorcraft requirements.
A group of seven mostly European NATO members is exploring whether they could launch a future rotorcraft programme for service entry around 2040.
Leonardo Helicopters is one of three companies alongside Airbus Helicopters and Sikorsky currently carrying out concept studies in support of that effort, under a project called the Next Generation Rotorcraft Capability (NGRC).
Bell is a core member of the Italian airframer’s NGRC consortium following the signature of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two tiltrotor makers in February last year.
The Texas-based firm’s V280-based design was selected by the US Army in 2022 as the winner of its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition, beating out a rival bid from Sikorsky.
If the NGRC project ultimately concludes a tiltrotor-based design offers the best capability, it could end up developing an all-new platform that would compete with the FLRAA, which will be offered to the global market through the USA’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) mechanism.
Although FMS would seemingly offer a lower-risk and lower-cost route to acquiring a next-generation rotorcraft than a multi-national clean-sheet development, Cutillo says this would not be “convenient for Europe”.
“We want to make a European product,” he says, where Leonardo’s contribution is “materially important”.
Cutillo stresses that Leonardo would have “no interest” in supporting a project where the company was “only a build-to-print maker” of technology developed elsewhere.
Nonetheless, the relationship with Bell is “really evolving”, he says. “I think we are in the phase to understand what we could do in terms of workshare, what kind of platform and what kind of proposal we could make.
“But it is important that we understand clearly first what the requirements are.”
He points out that the eventual design of the NGRC programme, and the consortium behind it, will be determined by which nations commit to it in the long term.
Presently, the current grouping comprises Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK but Athens will leave at the end of the year and there is no guarantee that all the other members will stay the course.
Italy – one of Leonardo Helicopters’ domestic customers alongside the UK – has previously expressed a preference for tiltrotor technology.
Cutillo spoke to FlightGlobal on 12 March during the Verticon trade show in Dallas.
