Maritime Rotorcraft Growth Predicted

With naval expansion happening across the world, maritime helicopter operators can cross the gamut of options from the most ‘built-for-purpose’ helicopters to breathing new life into old machines.

- Andrew Drwiega

The military helicopter market is currently in ebb rather than flow. The relative lack of completely new designs has fed an upgrade market for many military helicopter types, although some smaller fleet operators in Asia-Pacific have traded in their older 1960s-70s analogue rotorcraft for newer and more expensive yet more capable ‘glass cockpit’ equipped machines.

A survey published in April 2017 by Indian market reseach company Absolute Reports, entitled The Global Military Rotorcraft Market 2017-2027, stated that “the global military rotorcraft market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.14 percent over the forecast period driven by the need to replace aging fleets and enhance capabilities pertaining to disaster relief operations.”

Governments across the world are increasingly favouring the procurement of multi-mission helicopters, although naval helicopters tend to be designed for anti-submarine or anti-ship roles, or both.

There is a necessity now with respect to military maritime rotorcraft that they be part of a ship’s system of systems, rather than just a lone platform carrying out tasks semi-independently of the naval platform. As is the trend with most military rotorcraft, there is no longer any perceived value in an air asset that is only specialised in one activity. Multi-mission rotorcraft need to be adaptable to deliver everything from more covert electronic intelligence (ELINT) through direct kinetic action such as anti-submarine (ASW) and anti-surface warfare (ASuW).

Absolute Reports, in its document, states that “the multi-mission and maritime helicopter segment of the overall market] will account for 43.7 percent of the total global rotorcraft market over the forecast period, followed by attack, transport, and training helicopters.”