Nation’s Lifeline

AVM Manmohan Bahadur (retd)

As the Indian Air Force (IAF) turns a ripe 84, a review of its most talked about, and visible, rotary wing fleet needs to be done. While its prowess in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) is well known due to the numerous unfortunate natural calamities that have happened in the recent past, this piece will review the planned new inductions and how they would influence the IAF’s operational capability. The appraisal would consider the fleet divided into three weight categories — light, medium and heavy while the attack helicopter segment will be discussed separately.

Light Helicopters
The 400-strong Chetak/ Cheetah fleet (of the three Services and Coast Guard) has been due for replacement for many years but it appears that these machines will soldier on for the next one decade plus, at a minimum. The saga of the replacement helicopter under the Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) project has had a very troubled past, with the programme being cancelled twice due to many reasons. This has resulted in the decision of the government to go the Inter-Governmental route with Russia for the Ka-226, which was one of the contenders during the second fly off (with Fennec of Airbus Helicopter). Close to around 200 Ka-226 would be bought from M/S Kamov, with some off-the-shelf from Russia and the majority being made by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Latest media reports say that HAL would partner a private firm for creating a manufacturing line in India. The announcement of this arrangement is more than a year old and it is hoped that the contract would be signed soon.

The LUH programme of HAL is supposed to cater to the remaining 200 Chetak/Cheetah replacements. The LUH has just flown its first ‘technical’ flight on September 6 and so has at least three years more of test flying before it gets its certification for release to service.

Hopefully, HAL has learnt its lessons from the earlier fiascos of literally all its aircraft programmes not gearing up in parallel for the production line to start. It has a firm order of around 200 machines, a situation that any private manufacturer would love to have — one hopes that the government puts the HAL on notice to ensure fruition of the project, to include productionising of orders.

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The Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) Dhruv has stabilised in service after going through trying times due to poor spares support from HAL. Helicopters sent for servicing used to stay months at a stretch at HAL, eight to 10 months at times, before being serviced. The flight line availability was poor, sometimes below 50 per cent, due to the poor logistics train from HAL. This has now improved, as also the amelioration of problems with its integrated main gear box. Hopefully