The Army allocates 13 million to improve the performance of its Super Puma and Cougar veterans
The Land Army seek to increase the performance of their helicopter fleets Super Cougar Y Cougar. To do this, it has launched a tender with a budget of 13 million euros for the fine-tuning of different components of these devices.
It is a service contract for payment per flight hour (RBHfor its acronym in English) and affects 32 aircraft in the fleet of Super Cougar Y Cougar. The Army establishes a series of dynamic components common to both fleets (main rotor head, main transmission case, tail rotor case, intermediate transmission case) subject to complete general overhauls (overhaul) after a certain number of hours of operation. flight or by elapsed time.
“The estimate of the needs for this contract has been determined, based on the history of operation of these fleets, in an operating assumption of between 3,200 and 4,800 annual flight hours and for a period of five years,” says the Army.
The Army points out that this contract is necessary because the current fleet of helicopters Super Cougar Y Cougar “it finds a level of operability below what is desired”. And he adds: “It is considered critical to have enough aircraft in operational condition to be able to meet with guarantees the international commitments derived from participation in peacekeeping operations, as well as the periods of operational training prior to those deployments and the rest of the missions entrusted to the Airmobile Forces of the Army”.
Along with the revisions, the winning company must carry out emergency maintenance tasks (unscheduled) and corrosion inspections of the main transmission and the main rotor head.
Las Famet currently has a fleet of 15 Super Cougar and 17 Cougar. Some of these helicopters, manufactured in the 1980s, are already at the end of their useful life, and will be progressively replaced by the new ones NH90 progressively.
Deployment in Iraq
As the Army mentions, these helicopters, specifically the Cougars, are currently deployed on missions abroad. Famet has four aircraft of this model in Iraq at the base of Al-Assad, in the governorate of Ambar, in the northwest of the country. This unit, known as Task Force Bull It is in charge of transporting personnel and material for the international coalition troops that have been operating in Iraq since 2014.
The contract is managed by the Head of Economic Affairs of Army Logistics Support Command through open procedure and ordinary processing. Interested companies have until September 23 to obtain contract documents and present their offers. The budget -13.2 million, with taxes- is divided into three annuities of 4.4 million euros corresponding to 2023, 2024 and 2025. The estimated value amounts to 24.6 million by including 8.8 million more for a possible extension of two years and another 2.6 million for modifications.
