The Indian government has initiated the process to procure 22 attack helicopters for the Indian Air Force. Requests for Proposals were sent out earlier this month to five contenders. From top: Bell AH-1 Super Cobra; the Boeing AH-64D Apache Longbow; AgustaWestland AW129 Mangusta; Eurocopter Tiger; Kamov Ka-50 Black Shark and; Mil Mi-28 Havoc.
The Denel AH-2 Rooivalk would have been a contender for the deal, had Denel not been on the blacklist for that anti-material rifle fracas.
Tiger looks futuristic! This could be the winning contender…..Shiv any news on HAL LCH? Im getting excited as September is closing fast!
Nice Pics. Everyone would like to know more about LCH.
Actually LCH was promised at 2001,2003 and 2005. Finally 2007 – we started seeing static displays in Aero India. If I am not wrong, IAF had invested 300cr on this baby. Also there talks about delays around weaponization..
Now that IAF has gone for foreign contenders, isnt very encouraging.
It is time for the Indian millitary establishment to wean themselves off Russian platforms and go with the Americans or the Europeans. This will allow us access to new perspectives and technology.
That being said, I think they may just go with the Russians, coz the Pakis have the Bell Cobra, Eurocopter may be out of price range and we alrady have Russian framework for parts and repairs.
I wonder which version of the Eurocopter is being offered… UHT or HAP?
Done with weponising ALH mark-2 what’s big deal in weponising LCH! I think delay (if any is there) is due to some modification work going on LCH to make it fit in IN’s bill. As LCH is supposed to share deck with others on coming LHDs of IN.
Shiv, could you check with your sources to find out if the navy has decided against using the N ALH as a replacement for the chetaks ??
Replacing the sea kings with N ALH was never an option as the 2 choppers
come in an widely different weight class.
rahul, do you realise that LCH is completely different from ALH aerodynamically and hence requires flight testing from scratch ??
Only ‘some’ subsystems are common to both platforms. The sensor fit and displays of the LCH will be completely different.
fighterclass: the navy hasn’t decided *against* inducting the Dhruv to replace its Chetaks, but will be inducting far less numbers than initially projected. the reasons according to Admiral Sureesh Mehta on the sidelines of a february 08 press conference, “It is just that the Dhruv does not meet the qualitative requirements of the navy. The Dhruv does not meet the navy’s payload requirements. There are some limitations in using the helicopter in sea-based operations. But it is a good helicopter. I hope the navy benefits from HAL’s future endeavours.” the navy, as you know, is part of the new tri-service tender for helicopters, though it is also talking to HAL to build a light-medium class maritime utility chopper.
fighterclass: i’ve blogged about the N ALH’s troubles before. here are the links:
http://livefist.blogspot.com/2008/02/kya-hal-hai-dhruv.html
http://livefist.blogspot.com/2007/10/alh-naval-variant-in-trouble.html
Shiv,
Any news of the LCH?
–Kanan
cane-an: will be posting in detail about the LCH in the next two days. gathering the info right now! stay tuned.
Shiv, could you post more details about the IN’s medium utility chopper requirements? so, the IN wants a different heli for this or just a derivative of the Dhruv specially tailored for this?
I Think India should go for Black Shark KA 50.. Believe me they are awesome copters (has Capabilities to beat Ah-64 apache)..but bit expensive..so Russian AF has only few..and they are kept for their elite forces…