Value for Money

Palak Gupta

Accelerating the delivery process, the US Navy will transfer three ‘brand new’ MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopters to the Indian Navy by the end of this year.

The US Navy has allowed Lockheed Martin to leverage three helicopters from their inventory of brand new aircraft that have never been introduced into the fleet — ‘in order to provide them to the Indian Navy so they can begin training on a more accelerated basis than might normally be possible,’ according to a LM spokesperson.

Originally, the delivery of the first batch of MH-60Rs was scheduled for next year. “…So by this time next year in June, we anticipate delivering the first couple of aircraft to the Indian Navy to begin training. Then an additional aircraft will be delivered in 2022 and after that I really do not want to go into specifics because the Indian Navy and the US Navy still have to lay out the specifics of the delivery,” said Tom Kane, director of Sikorsky Naval Helicopter programme during a media briefing that was held virtually on 18 May 2020.

Lockheed Martin on 14 May 2020 was awarded a USD905 million contract for the production and delivery of three MH-60R Seahawk maritime aircraft for the Indian Navy and 21 MH-60Rs for the government of India under Foreign Military Sales (FMS). The work is expected to be complete by September 2024.

The MH-60R will replace India’s ageing fleet of British-made Sea King helicopters and will add to the forces ability to perform anti-surface and