The success of this project was all down to the partnership, collaboration and very high quality work of our engineers. Working alongside each other at our UK helicopter centre of excellence in Yeovil, the engineers from our UK and Italian departments brought a mixture of skills and experience which are critical to delivering a DAFCS into an air platform. My thanks go to the whole team
The presence of Italian Leonardo staff at Leonardo UK in Yeovil doesn’t make it a Italian helicopter… The same way that Leonardo UK working on ECRS Mk1 with Hensoldt & Indra doesn’t make it now a UK radar…
By the same logic, any Leonardo project that has any British engineers involved working inside Leonardo would also automatically go to the British tree too?
Its an incredibly strange logic. Italy doesnt operate the AW159, didnt test or evaluate it or even consider it for its armed forces. They were all built in the UK and are a development of the future Lynx project.
To use the nationality of staff who worked on a project from a company or where that international company is headquartered as the basis to add something to a tree, despite that tree never even looking at operating the helicopter from its main nation or any of its sub trees is a path we dont wish to take.
Otherwise anything with BAE, Lockheed or Boeing involvement (most modern equipment) suddenly becomes viable for the US or British tree.
In not saying that italy should get it, i was just pointing out that italian engenieers helped because someone said that they weren’t involved, thats it, in sorry if it wasnt clear, english is not my first language
Legally speaking the engenieers at Yeovil are employed by an italian company thru its british subsidiary, operating in an italian owned palant thru the same subsidiary, meaning that all that happens at Leonardo uk is owned by Leonardo, this includes every design they might came up with