Army has to wait for new choppers

After new tenders were issued to six aviation giants last year,trials to evaluate the performance of the helicopters were expected to be carried out in India this summer,followed by a round of winter trials in November-December.

However,even after completing all technical evaluations and assuring the competing companies that validation trails will be held ‘shortly’,the Defence Ministry is yet to invite anyone for trials. While the summer deadline is far gone,pushing back the procurement by six months,the ministry has not even called the competitors for a round of winter trials,effectively pushing back the entire process by a year.

The trials will now only be possible next year,which means that the first of the new light helicopters will not arrive before 2013-14,more than five years behind schedule. As reported by The Indian Express,the earlier procurement process that started in 2002 had come under a cloud after discrepancies emerged in the selection process. Besides getting hit by the delay in trials,the current procurement process also got a setback last November after on the contenders,US aerospace giant Bell,pulled out from the tender citing a ‘stringent’ offsets clause that requires the winning contender to pump in 50 per cent of the purchase price into the Indian defence industry.

This delay comes even as the Armed Forces are struggling to maintain the fleet of ageing Cheetah helicopters that are used to carry supplies to troops posted at extreme altitudes on the Pakistan and China border. The Cheetah choppers,which are of the 1970’s vintage,ferry medicines,food and also carry out casualty evacuation for troops that are posted at positions located over 20,000 feet on the border. In the new

tender,the Army was to get 133 helicopters while the remaining would have gone to the Air Force.

While Cheetahs are being used by both the Army and IAF for operations in extreme locations,the indigenous Dhruv helicopter is not faring well in high altitude tests that are currently being carried out in Ladakh and surrounding areas. The primary problem,evaluators say,is the helicopter’s inability to carry a ‘meaningful load’ of cargo to high altitude helipads.