The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the Royal Navy’s Merlin helicopter Out-of-Service Date (OSD) Extension Programme remains on track, with formal approvals progressing through standard departmental processes.
In two written parliamentary questions on 27 March 2025, Mark Francois MP (Conservative – Rayleigh and Wickford) asked the Secretary of State for Defence for details on the approvals process and expected timeline for the programme.
Responding on behalf of the Ministry, Defence Minister Maria Eagle stated that the programme seeks to retain Merlin helicopters in service from their current retirement window in 2029–30 through to 2040.
“The Outline Business Case was approved in October 2023,” she confirmed. “A Review Note was approved in December 2024.”
The programme is now undergoing Departmental Spend Control Approvals, which will determine whether to allocate funding for 2025–26. According to Eagle, the forecast for submitting the Full Business Case is currently set for early 2027.
The extension programme is intended to sustain the Royal Navy’s medium-lift helicopter capability over the next two decades, bridging the gap to any future platform decisions and maintaining key anti-submarine and maritime support roles.
kind of essential for an ASW frigate to have.
may even need a longer extension because i am not aware of any replacement program in the works. maybe the upcoming SDR will shed some light.
Perhaps a marinised AW149 could see the RN finally moved to a single type, replacing both troop and ASW Merlins and then Wildcats after that? Similar size to USN Seahawk.
No chance
Any talk of actual “expansion” of the Merlin ASW fleet especially if ever more frigates are ever ordered or just to have a bigger pool? And, if Norway selects the T26 will they try and sell the Merlin to Norway as well? I think Poland is using Merlin’s off their A140s.
Times reported that Leonardo is jointly bidding with BAES as Team UK, offering Merlin to go with T26. As Norway already operates the type it could be a winning combination.
I certainly think it’s between our bid and Germany’s.
Thanks Craig. That would be a very good double deal as would sellinf CAMM/CAMM-MR with the T26, maybe?
In reality Merlin is probably the last crewed ASW small ship flight the RN will ever have, so it will need to be in service until autonomous small ship flights are completely mature, which means they may even have it beyond 2040…because it will simply need to keep going without direct replacement until the whole concept of a crewed ASW rotor is redundant.
One of the key questions will be does that mean the entire purpose of crewed small ship fights become redundant or just ASW, after all small ship flights do many jobs. From distaste relief, transportation of personal and supplies, policing and constabulary work, ISTAR, ASuW etc.
Also there may be new jobs for a crewed small ship fight..after all one of the most potential uses of drones is on mass as a swarm, but still the most effective swarm has a human crewed command and control node..( as an example this will be a core function of a six generation fighter)..because you cannot bet human creativity with an algorithm even an algorithm that takes data and uses it heuristically. And for all sorts of reasons you don’t want your ship radiating on the EW spectrum to command drones… better to have a small ship flight a hundred miles away doing that.
So there may be a place for a crewed small ship flight as a drone control hub.
What would I do around Merlin at present. Well:
Future numbers, in reality the 30 Merlin 2s can only generate 10 small ship fights and that is not enough, first we know the sub surface threat is increasing, as Russia and china are building new generations of SSN/SSGN that are solid if not excellent, electric boats are proliferating and now even a none state actor can probably put together some form of sub surface drone as a threat. Secondly we now know the RN really needs to build up to 30 escorts, has 2 large carriers, will have 7 large replenishment vessels and will have 6 MRSS, most of its escorts fleet will not have any organic even self defence ASW capability and so will be Merlin depend if there is an ASW risk and finally it uses Merlin 2 as its AEW platform.. all that means that in really the RN optimally needs to be able to generate closer to 20 small ship flights that can be effective ASW platforms. This will be ameliorated when the AEW role is removed from Merlin down to generating around 15-16.. but it still has to face the fact a wildcat T45 or T31 pairing cannot even defend itself against a basic sub surface drone threat, let alone a military submarine. Beggers the question what is the point of a wildcat armed with a torpedo paired with ships without even adequate hull sonar…they will need a Merlin 2.
This then comes to capability, the RN are the masters of small ship flights killing surface combatants, the RN have in the last 50 years ( even the last 79) killed more surface combatants than any other navy and it’s all through small ship flights paired with anti ship missiles..and yet the RN Merlin’s don’t carry an anti ship missile ( the Italian Merlin’s do) this becomes even more problematic with the fact over half the RN escort fleet will not have adequate hull sonars so the RN will end up with a choice have ships with no ability to detect and kill sub surface threats or have ships without a primary long range ASuW function.
Finally that point that this is the last crewed ASW small ship fight and it may be needed in some form or other well beyond 2040. So new ones may need to be build with a more drone command node function.
So for me a steady trickle order of new Merlin’s to bring up the numbers allow the ability to extend usage way beyond 2040 and keep the production line open…as Merlin is still one of the newest and most effective large maritime rotors on the market it also still has lots of export potential.
Get it fitted with an anti ship missile no RN small ship fight should be without an anti ship missile.
As needed develop a programme to look at Merlin 2 as a drone command and control node.
Well argued case for more Merlins. I do wonder if this has not been recognized and is the reason the sole Puma replacement order thus far has been a few H145s. Be interested to see what the SDR has to say.
Great article a pleasure to read
Definitely need to integrate Sea Venom with Merlin and refit Wildcats with either dipping sonar or sonobuoys. Hull sonats for our ships that lack them too.
Okay so what are they going to replace it with?
We urgently need to look at underwater warfare capability of our surface ships.
Hull mounted sonar may have seemed anachronistic but recently the houthi have been using underater drones – these need to be detected before they can be countered (to me hull mounted sonar and a ship launched torpedoes – systems that would have been essentially useless against subs would be ideal for this).
ASW detection – potentially rotary wing drones with eitehr dipping sonars or sonarbouys could do a great job of this (I envisage rotary wing drones with different mission packages – dipping sonar, asw attack with a torpedo or two, antiship attack, surviellance etc. However all of these are likely to need some sort of datalink which makes the ship’s emcon more difficult.
For boarding actions, putting marines on merchant ship decks whilst enforcing sanctions etc. I can’t see an alternative to a conventinoal helicopter.
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