The United States has approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Norway of up to 21 Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, together with spares and associated equipment, at an estimated value of US$2.3 billion. The approval was issued by the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs on 21 August 2026 under Congressional Notification Transmittal 26-83.
The clearance is an authorisation for a possible sale rather than a finalised order. Lockheed Martin's Sikorsky business in Stratford, Connecticut has been identified as the principal contractor.
A Reversal On The Rescue Variant
What makes the notification notable is what it replaces. Only months earlier, Norway had walked back a plan to acquire nine HH-60W Jolly Green II combat rescue helicopters, a purchase that had itself been approved by the US State Department in 2025. The country has now set its sights on a considerably larger buy of the less specialised but far more widely operated UH-60M instead.
The tradeoff is a familiar one in defence procurement: fewer highly specialised airframes versus a larger fleet of general-purpose ones. At 21 aircraft rather than nine, the UH-60M package gives the Norwegian armed forces substantially more rotary-wing capacity for tasks ranging from troop transport to logistics, at the cost of the dedicated combat search-and-rescue fit that the HH-60W would have brought.
What The Package Includes
The proposed sale covers 46 General Electric T700-GE-701D engines β comfortably more than the 42 needed to equip 21 twin-engine airframes, leaving spares in the pool. It also includes 25 sets of AN/AAR-57 Common Missile Warning Systems, Common Infrared Countermeasures, and AN/APR-39E(V)2 Radar Warning Receivers.
That self-protection fit is a meaningful part of the package. A transport helicopter operating in contested airspace lives or dies on its ability to detect and defeat infrared-guided threats, and the CMWS and CIRCM combination is the same broad protective suite fitted to US Army Black Hawks.
Replacing A Thirty-Year-Old Fleet
If the purchase proceeds, the Black Hawks are most likely to supplant the Royal Norwegian Air Force's fleet of 18 Bell 412s, which have been in service for more than thirty years and have been undergoing a mid-life upgrade programme intended to extend their service lives.
There is also a strong fleet-commonality argument. The UH-60M shares its basic T700 powerplant with the AW101 Merlins that Norway operates primarily on search-and-rescue duties, and there is a high degree of commonality with the Royal Norwegian Navy's MH-60R Seahawks. For a country whose armed forces operate a comparatively small number of aircraft across several types, consolidating around a shared engine family simplifies training, spares provisioning and depot-level maintenance.
Geography reinforces the case. A significant proportion of Norwegian territory lies within the Arctic Circle, where cold-weather operations, long distances and limited infrastructure place a premium on rugged, well-supported airframes with a broad global spares network behind them. The UH-60M, operated in large numbers by the US Army and a long list of export customers, offers exactly that.
Sources: U.S. Department of State, The Aviationist. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By James Holloway.
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