Britain's Lynx successor, built for the battlefield and the flight deck alike. It flies parallel Army and Royal Navy variants that share only about 5% of their parts with the original Lynx, and has since been exported to South Korea, the Philippines and Algeria. Developed by AgustaWestland / Leonardo.
Britain's Lynx successor, built for the battlefield and the flight deck alike. Developed by AgustaWestland / Leonardo.
Photo: UK Ministry of Defence: Corporal Kellie Williams, RLC, Crown Copyright (OGL v3.0)See Specifications for full detail.
The AgustaWestland AW159 Wildcat is a twin-engine multirole helicopter built for the British Army and Royal Navy, developed from the earlier Westland Lynx. It first flew in 2009 and entered British service in 2014, and is also flown by South Korea, the Philippines and Algeria.[1]
Though it shares the Lynx's silhouette, roughly 95% of the airframe is new, including a strengthened structure, uprated engines and a digital cockpit. The naval HMA2 variant hunts submarines with dipping sonar and anti-ship missiles, while the Army AH1 flies battlefield reconnaissance; the UK's 2026 defence investment plan envisages replacing the type with autonomous systems from 2027.[2]
The Wildcat's roots go back to 1995, when the British government first announced the ageing Westland Lynx fleet would need replacing. What followed was a decade of false starts - refurbishment studies, an all-Merlin fleet floated and dropped, a scaled-back 'Battlefield Reconnaissance Helicopter' requirement - before the Ministry of Defence finally committed to AgustaWestland's Future Lynx proposal and signed a £1 billion contract for 70 aircraft in June 2006.[1]
The programme was designed from the outset to serve both the British Army's battlefield reconnaissance role and the Royal Navy's Surface Combatant Maritime Rotorcraft requirement from a common airframe - a deliberate two-customers-one-helicopter approach that shaped everything about the design that followed.[1]
Despite carrying the Lynx family resemblance, the AW159 is built almost entirely from new components - roughly 95% of the airframe, with only a handful of parts such as the fuel system and main rotor gearbox interchangeable with the legacy Lynx AH7 and HMA8. A new composite tailboom, redesigned nose, strengthened naval-standard undercarriage and a 12,000-flight-hour structural life all extend well beyond what the old Lynx airframe could offer.[1]
Two LHTEC CTS800-4N turboshafts, each producing around 1,362 shp, drive BERP IV composite main rotor blades through a new transmission - the same BERP rotor-blade lineage that helped a specially modified Lynx set the outright helicopter airspeed record in 1986. The result is a machine over a tonne heavier at maximum takeoff weight than the Super Lynx it replaces, with power to match.[1]
A four-screen glass cockpit and, on the naval HMA2, a Selex Seaspray 7000E AESA radar and Wescam MX-15HDi electro-optical turret give both variants genuinely modern sensor and mission-management capability - a decisive gap over the analogue-era Lynx it replaced.[1]
The Wildcat AH1 entered British Army service on 29 August 2014, with the Royal Navy's HMA2 following into operational deployment at sea in early 2015; within five years both services had fully withdrawn the Lynx. The naval variant quickly found itself doing real maritime security work, supporting Royal Marines boarding teams during the high-profile 2019 seizure of the tanker Grace 1 off Gibraltar amid the standoff over sanctioned Iranian oil.[3]
Export success followed the domestic rollout: South Korea became the type's first foreign customer in 2013, taking delivery from 2016, followed by the Philippine Navy from 2019 (with a further batch agreed in 2025) and, most recently, Algeria's navy in 2025 to equip its Adhafer-class corvettes. New Zealand evaluated the Wildcat for its own Maritime Helicopter Replacement programme but selected the Seahawk instead in 2025.[4]
Weapons integration has been a slower story than the airframe itself: the lightweight Martlet missile reached operational status years before the heavier Sea Venom anti-ship missile, which only achieved initial operating capability in October 2025 - underlining how much of the Wildcat's true multirole potential has arrived well after its 2014 service debut.[1]
In early 2026 the Wildcat found itself at the sharp edge of two emerging threats at once: in January, a Royal Navy crew demonstrated fusing live feeds from multiple uncrewed drones into a single real-time targeting picture, and in March, Martlet-armed HMA2s deployed alongside the destroyer HMS Dragon to the Eastern Mediterranean specifically to counter rising drone activity around Cyprus.[5][2]
Yet the type's long-term future in UK service is already in question: Britain's 2026 defence investment plan envisages replacing the Wildcat with autonomous systems, with the reconnaissance AH1 projected to begin retirement from 2027 and the naval HMA2 phased out between 2030 and 2035. Leonardo, meanwhile, is weighing the programme's future amid a thinning order book, with Algeria now its only outstanding customer for the naval variant - a helicopter still proving its worth on operations even as the industry debates whether it gets a successor at all.[6]
As a military helicopter the Wildcat is not required to broadcast ADS-B and flies low, so Flightradar24 sightings are opportunistic - most likely near RNAS Yeovilton, Wattisham Flying Station, or during Royal Navy ship deployments picked up by AIS-linked trackers.
| Performance | |
| Max Speed | 168 kn (193 mph / 311 km/h) |
|---|---|
| Cruise SpeedCruise Speed — The economical speed an aircraft sustains for the bulk of a flight - lower than maximum speed, chosen for the best balance of time and fuel burn. Glossary → | ~150 mph |
| RangeRange — How far an aircraft can fly without refuelling. Quoted figures vary with payload, speed and reserves - see also ferry range and combat radius. Glossary → | 483 mi standard fuel; 598 mi ferry range |
| Service CeilingService Ceiling — The highest altitude at which an aircraft can still climb at a useful rate (typically 100 ft/min). Above it, the air is too thin to keep climbing meaningfully. Glossary → | Not publicly disclosed by the manufacturer as a standalone figure |
| Airframe & Weight | |
| Main Rotor Diameter | 42 ft |
| Length | 50 ft 0 in fuselage |
| Height | 12 ft 3 in |
| WeightMTOW — Maximum Take-Off Weight - the heaviest an aircraft is certified to be at the start of its take-off run, including fuel, crew, payload and the aircraft itself. Glossary → | empty: 7,275 lb; MTOW: 13,228 lb |
| Rotor Blades | 4 main (BERP IV composite blades), 4 tail |
| Power & Payload | |
| Engines | 2 x LHTEC CTS800-4N turboshafts, 1,362 shp (1,016 kW) each |
| ArmamentArmament — The weapons an aircraft can carry: guns, missiles, bombs and rockets, whether mounted internally, on wing hardpoints, or in bomb bays. Glossary → | Pintle-mounted machine gun (FN MAG for Army, Browning M3M for Navy); naval HMA2 can carry up to 20 Thales Martlet lightweight multirole missiles, or up to 4 MBDA Sea Venom anti-ship missiles, or Sting Ray torpedoes and Mk11 depth charges; South Korean and Philippine navies field K745 Blue Shark torpedoes and Spike NLOS anti-ship missiles |
| Crew | 2 pilots, plus up to 6 passengers/door gunner in the cabin |
| CapacityPayload — Everything an aircraft is carrying that isn't the aircraft or its fuel: passengers, cargo, or weapons. Payload and fuel usually trade off against each other. Glossary → | 6 passengers including door gunner, or equivalent cargo/mission equipment; naval HMA2 typically flies a 2-3 person mission crew plus sensor operator |
| Program & Service | |
| Manufacturer | AgustaWestland / Leonardo |
| Origin | United Kingdom |
| First Flight | November 12th 2009 |
| Service Entry | August 29th 2014 |
| Number Built | 100 |
| Unit Cost | ~£1.7B whole-programme cost for 62 aircraft (2009 basis), implying roughly $21M-$27M per airframe depending on exchange rate and fit-out |
| Combat Losses | No documented combat losses; the type has flown extensively on counter-piracy, sanctions-enforcement and, from 2026, counter-drone operations without a confirmed aircraft lost to hostile action |
1 notable events involving the AW159 Wildcat, 2023 to 2023. Curated rather than exhaustive.
The UK Ministry of Defence temporarily grounded its entire AW159 Wildcat fleet after a routine inspection found a tail rotor gearbox ball race out of tolerance on one aircraft. No accident occurred, and flights resumed within days after fleet-wide checks.
| Wildcat AH1 | British Army battlefield reconnaissance and utility variant; entered service in August 2014, operated by the Army Air Corps. |
| Wildcat HMA2 | Royal Navy maritime attack variant with Seaspray AESA radar, Martlet and Sea Venom missile compatibility, and ASW/ASuW mission systems; flown by the Fleet Air Arm from frigates, destroyers and carriers. |
| AW159 (export) | Naval-configured export version flown by the Republic of Korea Navy, Philippine Navy and, from 2025, the Algerian Navy, typically fitted with different weapons and sonobuoy/torpedo systems to suit each customer. |
Source: Army Recognition
Source: Army Recognition
Source: Flight Global
Numbered as cited in the Overview article. Click a reference to see where it's used.
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