Military MRO: a tale of generations (I of II)

Photo Credit: ceremony in honour of the Puma's 50th anniversary
Armée de l'Air et de l'Espace, Ventiseri-Solenzara air base (BA) 126, 2 May 2022
(https://www.defense.gouv.fr/air/actualites/anniversaire-puma-celebre-ses-50-ans-service-operationnel-larmee-lair-lespace)

By Murielle Delaporte

Recently held in France, the defense and security exhibit Eurosatory 2024 has just witnessed the announcement by Leonardo of its new helicopter program, the AW249, designed to replace the A-129 Mangusta which has been in service with the Italian army since the 1990’s (1).

This is the first European combat helicopter program designed from scratch since the Tiger, which early discussions go back to 1975.

This illustrates the long-standing habit of European armies of working either with non-European equipment (such as the American Apache helicopter) or with old European equipment which need to last at all costs, since new European acquisition programs have been rather scarce over the past decades.
In this respect, the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Puma this spring confirms a set of conditions that has forced the armed forces to organize themselves so that their equipment can “run the long run” for a long time.

This note, published in two parts, attempts to draw some general observations from a military MRO that can be described as "intergenerational".

The symbolism of the Puma: fifty years of loyal service

On May 2nd, 2024, the French Air and Space Force (AAE) organized a ceremony at Ventiseri-Solenzara French Air Base 126 in honor of the SA-330 Puma helicopter and in order to celebrate its fifty years of service and nearly sixty years of existence.

It is indeed in 1965 that the first test flight of this legendary medium-tonnage helicopter took place in Marignane, in the south of France, as a result of a Franco-British cooperation between the then Sud Aviation and Westland Helicopters (1). And it is at Solenzara, where it made its debut and where a "Puma" centre is based, that seven Pumas continue to save lives on a daily basis and train crews (2).

Of the 697 or so SA 330 Pumas built between 1965 and 1987 - when the SA 332 Super Pumas took over on the assembly lines - eighteen are still in service in 2024 with the AAE and thirty-two with the French Army. The former are gradually being replaced by Airbus H225M Caracals (since 2005) and the latter, upgraded to AS532 Cougars in the 1990’s, by NH90 Caimans (since 2011 and by 2030 for the latter).

An exceptional longevity for a family of aircraft that is especially appreciated for its ruggedness and multirole specificities in France and abroad, where both the SA 330 version and the subsequent SA 332 are still very popular. For instance, just last year, the United Kingdom decided to postpone the retirement of its Puma HC.2 initially scheduled for 2025 to 2028 or even 2030 (3). The list of Puma end-users has indeed been growing over the years whether in Europe (Portugal), Africa (South Africa, Congo, Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia), the Middle East (UAE, Iraq), South America (Argentina, Ecuador) or even Asia (Philippines) (4).

However, maintaining for so long any air asset is of course a major MRO challenge, the cost of which has become - for some years now - quite unreasonable. Such a statement matches the logic and pattern of the famous inverted Gauss curve (also known as the "bathtub curve") that characterizes the evolution of the cost of MRO throughout the life cycle of any piece of equipment, where maintenance is systematically the most expensive at the beginning and at the end of its life.

In 2018, French Senator Dominique de Legge's report "on behalf of the Finance Committee on the availability of the Ministry of Defense’s helicopters" condemned the fact that " only one helicopter in three [was] able to take off ": This low technical availability rate - i.e. the ability to "safely carry out one of the functions for which [a helicopter] was designed, in less than six hours, taking into account the existing support system" - was partly explained by the coexistence of a "heterogeneous fleet, comprising a dozen separate fleets and bringing together aircraft from three different generations": "new generation" (NH, Tigre), "current generation" (Cougar, Caracal, Panther) and "old generation" (Puma, Gazelle, Lynx), thus adding to the complexity of support " (5).

An examination of the evolution of the availability rate of the SA 330 Puma over the recent period compared with the more recent generation fleets, however, gives rise to admiration, in the sense that the performance gap between the latter - as low as it has been on the French mainland or overseas and as high as it has been when deployed in operation - has not been that far from the overall fleet average.

According to a French parliamentary report on this issue, the readiness of the Puma compared to the rest of the French Air Force fleet was indeed 38.9 % compared to 42.9 % on the French territory (2019’s 1st semester), 55 % compared to 58.2 % overseas (2019’s 1st semester) and 82.6 % compared to 83.6 % in operation for the year 2014 (figure not available for 2019) (6). Not all figures are public, but this snapshot already gives a useful comparative picture for that time-period.

Footnotes

(1) Sud-Aviation became part of the French company Aérospatiale in 1970, which merged with Airbus in 2000. Westland Helicopters was bought by Italy's Finmeccanica in 2004, which has since become Leonardo.
(2) See for instance: https://theaviationist.com/2024/06/18/leonardo-aw-249-international-debut/
(3) See for instance: https://www.ladepeche.fr/2024/05/02/helicoptere-puma-50-ans-de-service-dans-larmee-de-lair-et-toujours-en-action-11922815.php and http://defens-aero.com/2019/10/remplacant-puma-armee-air.html
(4) https://www.avionslegendaires.net/2023/05/actu/la-raf-veut-retarder-le-depart-en-retraite-de-ses-puma-hc-2
(5) https://defense-zone.com/blogs/news/helicoptere-puma-alat-fin-de-service
(6) https://www.senat.fr/rap/r17-650/r17-6501.pdf (pages 9 et 10)