After sitting on two commercial bids for over two years, the Indian MoD today formally decided it would move forward with the stalled Multirole Helicopter (MRH) competition that looks to acquire 16 advanced multirole helicopters for the Indian Navy to augment and then replace its Westland & Sikorsky Sea Kings. Unless things exit the window the way they have so many times in the past, this one looks like a sitter for Sikorsky. It’s been an ill-tempered competition, with allegations and counter-allegations flying through much of 2011-12, mostly by NHIndustries against Sikorsky. And as we know so well, few things slow already lumbering procurement processes to a dead crawl like allegations of favouritism or partiality. The MoD’s decision today to move forward and open bids from Sikorsky for the S-70B Sea Hawk and NHIndustries for the NH90 is excellent news for the navy that’s increasingly hamstrung for capable rotorcraft it can send out to sea. It also paves the way for the larger IMRH programme that looks to procure a much larger number of similar helicopters, a competition that Lockheed-Martin has eyed closely with the MH-60 Romeo.
Well there is tectonic shift to the US defence industry after clearing chinook & apache offset and cancelling the European ones. Another US company Sikorsky is to gain with MRH. If NDA government was there in place of UPA surely F18 hornets would have got the MRCA deal instead of Rafale. It clearly shows how Sonia has played a role in influencing the decisions of Rafale.
@ Anonymous 7:58 pm
First The F-18 is large/heavy class combat aircraft, similar to the F-15, Su-30, J-11, Etc , in a different league from the Rafale which is a medium/light class similar to the F-16 , which was the requirement of the IAF
Second,Sonia Gandhi is an Italian Born Indian, and The Rafale is FRENCH, whats the connection she has here????
European moron
lol….. THE dumbest reason EVER!!!! … what u smoking ???
Im guessing if the Typhoon had won… u will say because she is italian !!! (facepalm)
S-70B most advance heli india must go for with. Second US defence companies very rich and they need not middleman for sell their epuimemts to india.
@G F18 is not heavy class aircarft. It was born out of light weight fighter competition. As YF17 it actually was pitted against F16. But this design is of 70s. RAFALE is more modern and more capable. Indian airforce looked at all aircrafts and choose the best they saw. No one sees any influencing here. Or may be except some who wants to see conspiracy everywhere.
@ Anoymous 1:40
U are partly correct BUT
The one that was included in the MMRCA is a F/A-18E Super Hornet (first flight 1995) – WHICH is an enlarged version (heavy class ) of the legacy F/A 18
The proposed aircraft was the F/A-18IN i.e. an indian Air force variant.
google it and see 🙂