Norway? The Norwegian Airforces already operates them, and the Navy and Coast Guard have just ended their NH-90 contract for Search & Rescue and ASW.
For the targets that are likely to be engaged by Martlet or Sea Venom its fine. None of the targets envisaged to be engaged by them (FIACS for Martlet, up to Corvette by Sea Venom) would have the capability to effectively engage Wildcat employing them.
They are tending to go down the MH-60R route instead of merlin/wildcat though.
Also one would hope that the Wildcat is not attacking by itself against an air defended ship, but instead is part of a combined effort to deal with the ship. So thst the defending ship has multiple dilemmas to deal with.
Thats what I would have expected him to say, but he was talking about the cockpit layout in Seahawk/Blackhawk being poor....and strangest of all he said the build quality was very poor. Didn't think it was a proper naval helicopter.
I can see there is a potential trend away from expensive manned naval helicopters towards VTOL UAVs. And there is a very real competition for rear deck space. The future will see Mk 70 VLS modules on the aft deck, or containerized Israeli Barak launchers, as chosen by the Dutch Navy. Unmanned or lean manning is the future and eliminating a helicopter flight crew and support staff is a huge savings. Manned SAR might have to be put aside in favor of actual warfighting capabilities. When an old fashioned manned helicopter is more expensive than a modest OPV, you can see how products like the Wildcat are fading away.
As much as I am a fan of manned aviation, I have to agree that this is one of the places where unmanned is likely able to do a satisfactory job, and they are faster/cheaper to build, and it does not take as long to train a crew.
