Ministers have confirmed that a decision on the Ministry of Defence’s New Medium Helicopter (NMH) programme will not be taken immediately, with the outcome now tied to the forthcoming Defence Investment Plan, as MPs warned in the Commons that continued delay could have consequences for Leonardo’s helicopter operation in Yeovil.

The issue was raised during an urgent question by Liberal Democrat MP Adam Dance, who pressed the government to clarify the status of the £1 billion procurement and address concerns surrounding the future of the long-established Yeovil site, which has been associated with UK helicopter manufacturing for more than a century.

Responding for the government, defence minister Luke Pollard said the NMH programme remained a priority but stressed that a final decision would be taken only once the Defence Investment Plan is published. He told MPs that the programme, first announced in March 2021 with competition opening in February 2024, would be considered alongside wider equipment priorities and budget decisions. “It is something that remains on my priority list,” Pollard said, adding that the contract award would be determined through the Defence Investment Plan, which he said would be published as soon as possible and was backed by what the government describes as the largest sustained increase in defence investment since the end of the Cold War.

Pollard also confirmed that he had spoken earlier in the day with senior leadership at Leonardo UK, including the company’s chief executive and the managing director of Leonardo Helicopters, describing the firm as an important strategic partner for the Ministry of Defence.

He said discussions had covered NMH exports as well as autonomous helicopter development, and emphasised that the government intended to continue constructive engagement with the company and with trade unions. “Leonardo remains an important strategic partner for the MoD,” he told the House, pointing to its role not only in helicopter manufacture but also in servicing, electronics and emerging autonomous technologies.

Dance warned, however, that uncertainty around the programme was creating pressure at Yeovil, noting that Leonardo has been the sole bidder for the NMH contract for more than a year. He said the company had indicated that the current bid would not be sustainable beyond March and argued that further delay risked significant industrial consequences. “If this contract is not awarded by then, we will lose over 3,000 manufacturing jobs in Yeovil, support for over 12,000 jobs in the regional supply chain, and the £320 million that Leonardo contributes to local GDP,” he said. Those figures were cited by MPs during the exchange, reflecting concerns raised publicly by Leonardo’s leadership, but were not endorsed by ministers.

Other MPs from across the House echoed the industrial and strategic concerns.

Labour MP Calvin Bailey said the issue went beyond employment alone, arguing that the future of sovereign helicopter capability and long-term skills development was also at stake. He noted that the NMH programme had existed within what he described as an unfunded equipment plan inherited from the previous government, adding that difficult decisions were now unavoidable as part of a wider effort to stabilise defence investment and prioritisation. Former defence procurement minister James Cartlidge said he had deliberately weighted the NMH tender toward UK rotary-wing work and exportability when launching the competition in February 2024, warning that those aims would be undermined if the programme were cancelled.

Pollard declined to commit to a timetable or to separate the NMH decision from the Defence Investment Plan, saying he was not in a position to provide a definitive answer during the exchange. “The NMH decision will be made as part of the Defence Investment Plan that will be announced shortly, so I won’t be able to give him an answer today,” he said, while reiterating the government’s intention to continue engagement with Leonardo and to recognise the importance of Yeovil to the wider UK defence industrial ecosystem.

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82 COMMENTS

  1. No immediate replacement for Puma2 whose pilots and MaC have been binned prematurely. An amazingly talented and experienced group of airmen and women. Sacrificed at the alter of civil service ineptitude and short sightedness.

    • Gapping things is very expensive as regeneration is eye wateringly expensive once the skills and knowledge have faded.

      • Everything is short termism with Uk Governments now, short term choices for quick headlines and votes ignoring the longer term impacts and realities. If it doesn’t get us a win now then it can be the next parliament problem so it’s not our problem.

      • They had to go back to the drawing board in mid-December after Starmer rejected the original plan for being £28bn over budget (or Healey wanted a budget increase but didn’t get it).

        Expect “NATO’s leading member, with the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War” to announce further defence cuts, leading by example as ever.

        Maybe we’ll gap Trident next?

        • All these billions over/under being quoted. Is anyone checking if they’re actually getting value for money on all their spends?

          • What do you really think yourself?

            I mean, you don’t seriously think that is always a consideration? At times, when a strategic asset is really needed governments are too hung up on money..and the stuf is late while in the end they pay more anyway!

    • That’s about the size of it I suppose..

      ‘You have Chinook for the troops and Wildcat for the officer airborne taxi service, you’ve got on fine without Puma, so explain why you need it????’.

      To be fair, it seems as if an order of a couple of dozen AW149’s would only be putting off the inevitable for a few years anyway.

      Setting up an assembly line for a few dozen helicopters, with zero export potential doesn’t seem like a great use of scarce defence funds, it seems like another black hole leading to a dead end.

      There’s zero chance of exports, Merlin is running out of steam and Wildcat was dead on arrival.

      If we were ordering 50 AW149’s for the RAF and chasing down Yeovil built exports, then it would be viable.

      As it is, its a quite understandable effort by MP’s to keep a factory open for a few more years, at the considerable cost of limited defence funds.

      We simply don’t require enough to warrant the huge expense of assembling, operating and supporting a handful of medium helicopters.

      The government refuse to increase defence spending and expand the armed forces, so thats that really…

      • Word is Norway are interested in both AW101s and AW149s. So Yeovil could be secured for some time, especially with the rumoured Proteus order.

        • Poland is building the AW149 too but not sure if their Merlin’s are being bulit in Poland under licence or the UK? I guess any Norwegian order will be tied to the UK package deal with the T26?

          • Poland has an assembly line for AW149s. AFAIK they don’t have Merlins (AW101s) at all, not sure what they’re putting on their T31 variants.
            The T26 order is in the bag, so the helo order is separate especially as it’ll be with a separate company, but them choosing T26 and already having Merlins certainly helps, as does synchronisation of specs and operations. Looks like Leonardo’s to lose.

              • Blimey that was quick smd quietly done! If for their AH140s it should be able to operate off T31s if ever needed to.

            • Also surely we’re due a follow-on order for more Merlins at some stage?

              We could build AW149 for NMH then when that’s finished, more Merlin to see our crewed rotary ASW force through to the second half of the century…

                • The problem guys is its all simply not enough to keep a factory open, a few orders here, a few there.

                  The Labour government won’t increase defence spending, or expand the armed forces, so thats that, im afraid.

                  If Leonardos Yeovil site can struggle on to the early 2030’s and a future government actually takes defence seriously, it ‘might’ stand a slim chance of surviving.

                  • Not sure its fair to add a party-political element into this – the lowest level of defence spending since the 1960s (at 1.9% of GDP) was in 2018 under Theresa May

                    • Don’t get me wrong Charles, the Tories are equally responsible for the shit show!

                      But, Labour is in the hot seat, the new Cold War is gathering momentum rapidly, all our allies are pushing forward with the funding and orders and we are doing nothing, just twiddling our thumbs while Rome burns…

                      That’s firmly on Labour. Defence spending needs to be rising year on year to reach 3.5 % by 2030.

                    • Which has yet to be improved upon in real terms despite all the talk of increased defence expenditure (with nothing to show for it) in 18 months of Labour rule – they can’t blame everything on the previous Conservative administrations!

              • The RN has not bought a single new Merlin since the initial forced on them buy 25 years ago, not a one.
                They are hated, they are so marginal on performance, they can’t even be armed with ASMs and availability is still shockingly bad @50%

        • Well the newspapers over here in Italy are saying Leonardo will close it’s factory in England…. So not sure how secure it all is 🤔

      • At this point with such low numbers and as you say the likely inevitable conclusion of production of Yeovil not to far down the road if the best option is to buy off another Leonardo production line and benefit from lower prices and potentially higher numbers if more affordable from elsewhere with how limited funds are.

        Short of an actual war breaking out that the U.K. is actively involved in, defence won’t be funded properly and additional helicopters will not be purchased to keep lines open. In this case equipping the army properly with a sufficient number of NMH that will be in service the next 30 years is far more important than a few years of jobs and resilience slogans.

  6. Annddd no one here is the least bit surprised by this, the program which has been around a while and should have been decided a long time ago and was repeatedly pushed down the road is pushed down the road again. “DIP”

    Leonardo has warned for a while that the NMH is the only thing keeping Yeovil going, but the unserious successive Governments will push out rhetoric on resilience and improving the industrial base, whilst content starving and losing the key parts of the industrial base, it’s not a great advertisement for defence companies to invest in the U.K. to then have to try and win contracts elsewhere to support U.K. defence jobs as the U.K. refuses to invest properly.

    Treasury – if you can do without Puma for years why do you need a replacement, MRSS will get canned by the same logic if NMH goes.

    • Nailed it, all I see is continuing decline in capability with our current governance…

      GCAP and AUKUS will suck the defence spending dry between them, everything else will share the crumbs off the table.
      I cant see any way Yeovil can survive it to be honest.

      If ( big if) the Army can prove a genuine need for medium support helicopters, then perhaps they will be allowed to lease a handful??

  7. Needs a repeat of Flt Lt Pollock to scare the wits out of Londoners, city folk and the blob. An FGR4 at rooftop height across our cities to remind them the RAF still exists – just!

  9. “forthcoming Defence Investment Plan“…

    “long-overdue Defence Investment Plan” would be more accurate 🤷🏻‍♂️

  11. After due consideration I think we as a nation may need to start shutting the hell on the geopolitical stage..because we have a big mouth and our stick is getting smaller and smaller.. and big brother NATO seems to have gone on Permanent holiday..unless our government grows some and buys a bigger stick.

    • It does make you wonder what other countries think behind the scenes when they listen to the rhetoric of British Politicians, it’s hard to believe that it doesn’t damage a countries credibility when said country commits to commitments it knows it can’t meet individually (NATO ARRC) but continues to make other commitments on top that it also can’t meet for clout using the same resources which are already insufficient for the original commitment.

      • To an extent most countries do this.. but by doing so they are gambling they are not called to pay all the debts at the same time.. the problem occurs when it looks like they will have to.. and in a world that looks like it may more to an organic global conflict that may happen.

  12. Bit of an aside but i read somewhere that Germany is going to be transferring it old Naval Lynx’s to Ukraine, i think up to 26 of them? There could be some potential upgrade rework for Yeovil there and what about from other Lynx/Wildcat operators too, like Korea, Philippines, others?

    • Yep, also including a large number of Sea Skua as well. But as their drone boats have pretty much denied the Black Sea to the Russian Navy. What will be their purpose?

      • Afternoon DB, good for recce, small troops utility or medvac? Maybe those Sea Skua’s could still do some damage? Possible conversion upgrade to some anti tank-anti drone capabilities? Does Ukraine have any navy corvettes as i thought Turkey was building them 1 or 2?

      • Indeed. Would be a turn up for the book though. Yeovil get Norwegian orders for Merlin and AW149 and we buy a larger number of cheaper Puma replacements.

          • No idea. I suspect what’s happening is that the govt hope to persuade Leonardo to keep Yeovil open with orders for Norwegian Merlins for their T26s and AW149 and the promise of UK orders for Proteus for the RN. Meanwhile we can save money by buying Black Hawk. I think the argument is that ‘you’ve seen one battlefied helicopter, you’ve seen them all’ so you buy on price not bells and whistles.

    • Yep, it seems that the MOD just doesn’t have the money to accept the Leonardo tender, and the government won’t provide it. So the choice has come down to cancelling NMH completely or buying a few probably refurbished UH-60 Black Hawk’s deemed surplus by nations serious about their defence. Sadly it looks like helicopter manufacture in the UK has ended, and most of the Yeovil site will soon close.

      Starmer’s speech of 2 June 2025: “”Britain Must Be Ready For War”
      Reeves’ speech of 24 July 2025: “We’re on a war footing”

      What a bad joke.

      • All speculation at the moment of course. But if it turns out to be what happens at least the NMH does happen. Black Hawk could do the job and would be acceptable. Who knows, maybe the cost trade off enables the RN to get more Merlins or Proteus. Symptomatic of how tight the budget is.

      • Do they say that Quentin, you will give them ideas, before you know it, a simple order for refurbished UH60Ms will become a delayed nightmare of UK mandated modifications, bloating to tripple the price before getting cancelled….

        We have to stop buying gold plated extremely expensive kit, we need an airborne builders transit, we don’t need an airborne top of the range Mercedes Mini bus with all the extras…

        If we can buy secondhand refurbished and updated UH60s I would be a happy man… So would the Army!!!!

        • So would I we called for it all along. Anything else they’ll only screw up and make it all about Yeovil. As is already happening.
          The military? Who cares if they lost the RAF medium lift capability.

        • I will try and find the article i read about uprated engines which I think was for Blackhawk or maybe it was the Apache? BTW I’m not making any of this stuff up just to make a post. I’m only part-time on this and other sites. Its hard to keep up with it all. A cheaper Blackhawk purchase may mean a greater number for the same money.

        • I think thats the plan Quentin, we would then have the same engine in both fleets.

          I would love to see a fleet of 40 UH60M’s, to run alongside our Chinook fleet.

          I suspect however, we we simply won’t receive anything. We might get an additional 5 or 6 Chinook and ‘possibly’ a small leased fleet of medium support helicopters.

  15. Poland, Germany, France, and others all massively increasing defence budgets and quickly rolling out new assets. Looks like only the HMG is still cutting and cutting!!

      • Yep, spot on mate and Starmer just stands there like a rabbit caught in the headlights, frozen in fear of his back benches.

        He knows they will block any substantial increase in defence, in the same way they castrated his welfare reform bill.

        Lame duck government, time for a generational election, our country is at risk and Labour are just sitting on their hands…

  16. No surprise.
    The sooner these charlatans are out the door the better.
    Sadly, a poster, forget who, told me last year that Leonardo knew they had the order and that long lead items were already underway.
    Pity, I believed them.
    As for Blackhawk. Great, it’s reportedly what the military have wanted for years.
    Remember them??? Those poor suffering bastards at the end of the queue for defence money when industry and politics wins every blasted time.

  17. The NMH order has been delayed so long that it is now caught in the big Defence Investment Plan debate.

    HMG is committed to spending about £20 bn more on defence over the next two years. That is a heck of a lot of new money, so you’d think there would be enough to spare for a useful number of a pretty straightforward medium utility helicopter. But alas not, for three reasons, viz:

    1) There is a massive backlog of old equipment that needs replaced, which previous governments have kicked into the long grass to avoid the cost. For instance, the RN would normally expect to build a new escort every 18 months, so 6 or 7 over the next 10 years of the DIP. But now they are having to build nearly twice that number, 13, over 10 years. Where is the double-your-money to come from?
    At the same time, they have to fund up to 17 other ships (3 new FSSS, 1 Proteus, 3 Castle MCMV, 6 MRSS, 3 River 1 replacements and a deep sea survey vessel to replace HMS Scott). That is way beyond the current and planned budgets, again, where is the money to come from?
    All three services are in the same boat, the army having the biggest backlog of old equipment that previous governments have not provided the money to replace.

    2) The current rush to new ‘transformational’ equipment is going to add tremendously to the equipment bill. The navy’s Atlantic Bastion plan is going to cost £3bn-£4bn-£5bn, and I would think a good deal more.
    The RN wants a MALE UAV to be launched from a carrier, a heavy-lift UAV, Dragonfire DEWs, more NSM, future FCASW missiles and the list goes on. The army and RAF have their own transformational wish-lists too, though not as wildly expansive as the RN
    Problem is there is no way the new money is going to stretch to a £10bn+ rash of new technology weaponry on top of the long list of elderly equipment needing replaced.

    So something has to give somewhere.

    It shouldn’t really be the NMH. A US army division has 30 frontline medium utility helicopters, so about 55 in total, for supply, troop movement and air assault; our 3 Division and 1 Division have exactly none. The US division has command and EW ones too, plus 22 frontline Chinooks for supply and medevac. The RAF needs a batch too, really about 30, for tactical supply, CSAR etc. With what are we to fill the big gap if there are no NMHs? A few tired, second-hand Black Hawks is hardly a useful solution.

    The fact is there is nowhere near enough money in the budget to do everything the services, particularly the RN, want. And on top of this of course is the ever-soaring nuclear programme with 4 vastly–expensive Dreadnought SSBNs on the horizon.

    3) Question is can HMG actually find the money to be spending an extra £13bn a year on defence in two or three years time? Where is all going to come from – extra taxes, cuts to welfare services, miraculous growth? That is the uneasy background to the 10-year DIP.

    Hard fact is, if we want to spend billions on transformational tech like Project Bastion, we will have to cut some of our conventional capability to pay for it. NMH is bound to be one of these capabilities in the snipers sights.

    • How about keeping MOD budget where it is, but convincing Treasury to take back the deterrent under their funding responsibility?

      Wishful thinking, I know…

      • That’s what’s needed.
        Separate the nuclear deterrent from the defence budget.

        We appear to be getting obscenely poor value from our military spend, separating the nuclear deterrent should provide more long term clarity on what’s available to be spent where.

    • With 1. Do the B2 Rivers need replacing right now? They seem to be soldiering along nicely. Would giving them a radar, comms upgrade and new RWS be worth it? Can they handle a Peregrine UAS? Might be good for another 5 years?
      With the MRSS does the UK really need 6 right now-near future? The Bays look like they can carry on a bit and so can this be cut back to just 2-3? 2 Mistral/Canberra LHDs or 3 Elliade or 1 +2 of both? My few quids worth.

      • I doubt that the River 1s will get replaced in the ten year plan, or the Albions and Bays be replaced by MRSS before 2035. Suspect they will all have to be delayed to post-2035 to free up the money for T26, T31, FSSS and the RN’s vastly over-ambitious transformation plans.

        There is a danger that the RN, unless checked, will again syphon off a big slice of the new money intended for the army and RAF.

  19. I think the comment about muddling through with Chinooks is probably pertinent. But it ignores the fact that the very expensive Chinook will wear out a lot quicker than expected and cost a lot more to run. Continue to obfuscate and you end up running a bus when you need a taxi, therefore it ends up costing a lot more to run and at the end of it you end up needing new Chinooks and new medium helicopters and no money for either. Factor in what you muddle through with in peace time is unlikely to cut it during war time. People will see a chinook coming a lot easier than a mid range and are you really going to use a chinook to insert a 6 man team for example? The while year in year out budgeting rather than seeing the big picture is totally killing us.

    • All true but to these muppets a helicopter is a helicopter,they have NO idea how such assets should be used.
      Tired old lines I know but we can spunk £bn,s on welfare,NHS,net zero and immigration etc yet can’t find a penny to defend those very things.

    • Fair points. Re in year budgeting, my understanding is that Reeves delivered a 4 year departmental spending settlement in June 25, so the issue is to do with how the SDR is translated into a DIP that somehow stays within that settlement. Notwithstanding pressure to switch money from other departments like health and benefits to defence I don’t see that happening because it would mean a complete rework of a 4 year plan for every govt dept. It wouldn’t get through parliament and I don’t see any chance of an election and a new govt any time soon.
      Realistically, managing the situation is going to be a matter of prioritising, cutting our coat according to our cloth and sharing the pain with suppliers. This is what we are seeing being played out in the NMH. Point taken about rappelling 6 man teams – I think we will see UK forces seizing rogue tankers – not from chinooks. I believe NMH has ‘ made the cut’ but we have to reduce the price and ask Leonardo to share some of the pain – hence the talk of Black Hawk and enticing Leonardo to keep Yeovil open with help with export orders rather than UK AW 149s.
      We will see this approach of prioritising, cutting cloth and pain sharing being played out in all areas: e.g. expensive Boxer numbers cut in favour of cheaper Patria. Just my take.

  20. One option would be to place an order with Leonardo for small helicopters we don’t need to keep the factory open while we make a decision on the helicopters we do need (maybe about 10 years later). These small helicopters will necessarily cost more money than they should, and feature novel accessories such as glued bolt heads…

    Or, we can hold off ordering anything, allow Yeovil to close and its skilled workforce to disappear, then pay an exorbitant amount of money to an American firm to set up shop in another part of the country, training a whole new workforce from scratch to build highly modified versions of a different, foreign built helicopter, then find out that the new helicopter is too heavy from all the mods that it can’t take off, much less hover backwards over a kerb, and the patchy build quality means we’ll have to pause roll-out despite signing off on it being ready…

    Nothing like having a defence industrial strategy!

  21. The things we’d all like to say would have us arrested, but it wouldn’t even be that bad or damaging. Just a little physicality and telling them to stop fucking around and get on with it.

    I know my place of work has our moments of sheet stupidity, but thankfully it’s small and I can intervene and not being able to intervene with this lot, because they see me as a Labouring Class, not a benefits scrounger or part of a community religion police force, is just bewildering.

  22. The problem with the argument.. of we don’t have the money is it’s utter bollox and shows the classic human.. it will never happen” model of thinking. The simple truth is we cannot fight a peer war, the cost to our society will likely be catastrophic for a generation even if we win and don’t get blown die in nuclear fire and starvation.. we are saying we cannot afford an extra 20-30 billion spread over say 5-10 years.. yes we can what we could not afford is the trillions of pounds and hundreds of thousands of casualties even a successful peer war would cost.. if it went out of control we would loss untold millions and our entire society/civilisation… that is what we cannot afford.. saying we cannot give say an extra 5 billion a year to defend is living a delusion.

    • Whats it going to take before doing anything more significant? As you say, worse case scenario, if the damage to people, assets, infrastructure and country is so catastrophic could the UK actually get back up to fight back!? And with what? Why even risk the possibility of that? No significant GBAD over ports, bases, infrastructure is just lazy-stupid. All taking too long compared to some of our allies.

  23. Nice to see the Government and MOD has taken heed of every NCOs go to order: STAND STILL!!!!!! Literally no progress is being made on anything much at all because the Government is lying when they say they want to increase defence spending. As long as Ivan’s progress is glacial in Ukraine we will be fine is their secret policy.

  24. Wait, delay, no rush, might, might not, state normal for defence these days. Just do what the MOD and Government always do nothing, just gap it and hope its not needed and if any one asks say we are looking in to it for some thing in the future.

  25. The answer to the emergency question from the Lib Dem’s in parliament today was interesting.. it seems the minister of defence was meeting Leonardos today.. the things discussed were NMH in the DIP, future export orders for the NMH as well as future orders of unmade platforms… but apparently the government will release nothing before the DIP is published… which to my mind..if you know what you need and how much it costs is just bonkers…

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