Use of the Tiger by Army Aviation has been a long time coming. It eventually won a competition on 21 Dec 2001, for an Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) started in 1998, against the AH-64D, Agusta 129, the South African Rooivalk, Bell AH-1Z and the S-70 Battlehawk.
First 4 delivered directly by Eurocopter in Dec 2004 and the rest were assembled locally by
Australian Aerospace at Brisbane, the last of the initial batch of 22 on 1 Dec 2011.
Replaced the
Kiowa and
Huey on operations.
Final Operating Capability achieved by 1st Aviation Regiment on April 2016.
As of April 2019, the 22 helicopters have surpassed 30,000 flight hours.
On July 2019, Australian Department of Defence started the process of replacing the Tiger requesting proposals to Bell and Boeing selecting the
AH-64E Apache in January 2021.
#IPE19 Australian Army’ Tiger helicopters aboard HMAS Canberra for Indo Pacific Endeavour (IPE) deployment
