Over a ten-year period, the Army will have renewed the best part of its combat helicopter fleet,⁽¹⁾ with the Caracal⁽²⁾ fielded in 2006, then the escort and close support Tigers (HAP) and the destruction support Tigers (HAD) and, finally, the first NH90 TTHs⁽³⁾ before 2015. This change in aircraft generation, the result of an intense European cooperation, is the realisation of a long French experience in air combat and of a well-known airmobile know-how. It also meets a requirement common to all Armies deployed in the numerous current theatres of operations.

The Tiger: The First Tactical Lessons Learned

The first Tiger of the French Army was delivered on 16 March 2005 to the French-German School in Le Luc en Provence, and the tactical experimentation for its operational fielding started in Pau on 21 June 2007, with the arrival of the first two Tigers at 5 Attack Helicopter Regiment. After almost 2,500 flight hours in the Army Aviation,⁽⁴⁾ including more than 600 hours performed by pilots in operational units, we can draw the first conclusions.

Right from the start, the Tiger was designed as a multi-purpose weapons system. As Defence Minister Hervé Morin declared in Pau recently, this is ‘a good example of adaptation but also of the evolutions permitted by high technology, since the Tiger is both an aircraft with exceptional aeronautical capabilities and a weapons system with a high evolution potential, with its current escort and close support version and, soon, its destruction-support version.’