Post by Leonardo

At ILA Berlin - Pioneering Aerospace, #Leonardo, fully supported by the National Armaments Directorate and the Esercito Italiano - Italian Army, announced an #AW249 international promotional strategy, setting out the programme’s modern deterrence and interoperability benefits as well as outlining industrial cooperation prospects to partners and allies. It leverages unique capabilities and technologies neither available elsewhere today on the market nor expected to be mirrored by other platforms before several years from its operational readiness, uniquely and ideally bridging a further gradual evolution of military vertical lift.   The AW249 features a complete open architecture with opportunity for significant further growth and integration of complementary capabilities in the future to respond to the operational landscape and demanding market requirements. The AW249 boasts high performance in speed, range, power margin and payload, Hot & High conditions and manoeuvrability for advanced nap-of-the-earth flight, and this performance is core to the AW249 in its ability to be fully integrated and interoperable in the modern multi-domain battlefield.   Lorenzo Mariani, CEO and GM of Leonardo, said: “The result of a farsighted vision shared by Institutions and Industry, the AW249 programme comes into play in a particular period considering the evolving global security landscape and, even more, Europe’s efforts towards stronger synergies in defence and security initiatives. The AW249 factually demonstrates Leonardo’s world-class expertise in platforms and electronics, allowing a full control of core capabilities while ensuring significant industrial collaboration opportunities and may represent one of our catalysts to support these European efforts. At a time when strengthening defence and security cooperation has never been more important, the AW249 stands ready not only to deliver operational superiority but also to create new opportunities for collaboration, on the continent and beyond.”   Gian Piero Cutillo, Co-GM of Leonardo and MD of Leonardo Helicopters, underlined: “The AW249 provides evidence of our commitment to making helicopters evolve far beyond their traditional role in terms of architecture and capabilities, proactively embracing and integrating the latest technological trends while investing in a clear long-term roadmap. Much more than a new combat helicopter, the AW249 will act as a command-and-control node within the battlespace, capable of collecting, processing, fusing and distributing information in real time, orchestrating assets across domains to enable faster, better-informed decisions and actions. Once again, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Italian Ministry of Defence, the National Armaments Directorate and the Italian Army for their trust, support and close cooperation throughout this programme that now can evolve into a new teaming strategy.” http://lnrdo.co/4ute6Ly