NEW DELHI: After months of deliberations, India and Russia finally gave formal approval for a joint venture between Russian helicopters and Indian aeronautical public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) to manufacture 200 Kamov-226T helicopters, according to senior defence ministry official in the national capital.
A $1 billion inter-government agreement to manufacture the helicopters in India was finalised at the Indo-Russian Summit in Goa October 2016, in presence of Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was in December 2015 that it was first announced that the Kamov-226T would be the copter of choice.
According to defence ministry sources, after reservation from New Delhi over cost sharing, the deal was stuck for months but was eventually got final approval from the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin now.
According to an agreement, Kamov-HAL will be producing 200 of the Kamov 226-T copters at a cost of nearly Rs 6,500 crore or Rs 32 crore per copter in India. However, Indian forces require nearly 800 such light utility helicopters for their day to day requirement, as an incumbent fleet of Cheetah and Chetak vintage helicopters have lived beyond the threshold by more than 12-15 years which were purchased from France and inducted into the Indian Army over 40 years ago in 1971.
These light utility helicopters termed as a lifeline for high altitude operations used for high altitude posts, which are inaccessible by roads to supply ration, equipment, weapons and casualty evacuation missions.
Army has been making efforts to replace its ageing fleet of light utility helicopters for the last 15 years.
The Army had initiated the process of replacing Cheetah and Chetak fleet in early 2002, but the jinxed acquisition process could not go through in Congress led UPA government after repeated bribery scandals. Eventually, the MoD in 2014 scrapped Army’s contract of buying 197 such utility helicopters.
Upset with repeated accidents involving Cheetah and Cheetak helicopters, in 2012, army headquarters had written a letter to the office of the then defence minister AK Antony highlighting obsolescence issues which are dogging the fleet are component failures, low reliability, accidents and increased structural failures.
Army had gone into saying that cheetah/chetak have helicopters have virtually become “death traps”.
According to an official, as many as 20 pilots have lost their life in the Cheetah crashes in the recent years.
In 2014, a delegation of wives of army helicopter pilots had met the then defence minister Manohar Parrikar and raised their concern about the accidents involving these obsolete choppers.
There are about 250 Cheetahs/chetak in service at present with the army aviation corps. The airframe life of the light-utility helicopter is about 4,500 hours, but most of the Cheetahs that the Army has have logged over 6,000 flying hours. The engine life of the chopper is 1750 hours and most have gone past that too.