Indian Army to begin phasing out its Cheetah and Chetak helicopters

The Indian Army (IA) will soon begin retiring its ageing fleet of licence-built Chetak (Aerospatiale SA 316B Alouette III) and Cheetah (Aerospatiale SA 315B Lama) light utility helicopters (LUHs) following a series of recent accidents.

An IA official told IHS Jane’s on condition of anonymity that the AAC aims to initially replace around 40 of these platforms with indigenously designed and manufactured Dhruv LUHs.

The remaining platforms are set to be replaced and supplemented by 200 Kamov Ka-226T ‘Hoodlum’ light multirole helicopters, 60 of which will be imported from Russia in fly-away condition.

The other 140 units are set to be licence-built by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) as part of a joint venture between HAL, Russian Helicopters, and the Russian military export agency Rosoboronexport.

typical BS about the “series of recent accidents”. There have been no such series of accidents recently. One or two, spaced out over time, which is considered to be normal attrition for most air arms.

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Su-30MKI availability has improved to 63%

Critical India-Russia Pact to Improve Fighter Aircraft Availability

New Delhi (Sputnik) — India and Russia are at an advanced stage of signing a long-term arrangement that includes the manufacturing some of the spares of Russian-made aircraft being assembled in India.

Sources say talks between both countries are at an advanced stage for setting up a logistics hub for its most lethal combat aircraft, the Su-30MKI, at the facilities of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) in Bangalore. “Our status with Russia is much better than two years back. We have signed many of the contracts this year, very few are left. We are working on long-term arrangements including the manufacturing some of the spares in India. Earlier, there were some problems due to the need to change their [Russian] laws,” Manohar Parrikar, India’s Defense Minister, said.

Sources told Sputnik that delegation level talks are scheduled in March to sign the contract for improving spare parts availability including manufacturing some of them in India. Meanwhile, a significant improvement has witnessed in the availability of Sukhoi-30 fighter aircraft in last two years. “Sukhoi availability which had slipped to 46 per cent today is now above 63 per cent,” Parrikar said.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has finalized a long-term repair agreement with Russian original equipment manufacturers to improve the availability of aircraft for operational use. But it takes up to 18 months to deliver spare parts from Russia mainly due to cumbersome bureaucratic process and extensive documentation.

The Indian government is of opinion that a logistic hub will further improve the availability of Sukhoi-30 from the current 63 per cent. Currently the IAF has over 200 Su-30MKI fighters in its fleet and is expected to receive more by 2019. India has contracted for the delivery of 272 Su-30MKI with Russia. 75 per cent of operational fighter aircraft in the IAF are of Russian origin. This includes MiG-21, MiG-27, MiG-29 and Su-30MKI fighter aircraft.

Parrikar has also asked Russia to speed up the supply of technical equipment for an aircraft carrier, currently under construction at Cochin shipyard, so that it is not too much behind schedule. Due to the delay in the supply of some critical components, the carrier’s delivery schedule has been revised from December 2010 to December 2018. The original cost of $490 million has been revised to $2.9 billion. The delay is impairing India’s maritime capabilities in the Indo-Pacific Region. India currently has lone Russian-made aircraft carrier in service whereas it needs a total of three.

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Possibly but pricing is always a bit nebulous, if India is serious about the numbers price can be driven down. In theory a Block 50/52 is around that figure but that us leaving plenty of ancillary costs out (local facilities etc). I would presume that India not only wants to build them but also integrate their own weapons. The thing is there was a reason why the F-16 was punted for the MMRCA contest it is a pretty heavy and complex jet in its latest and proposed formats. If India did go down that path a variant similar to the F-16I with an AESA might be attractive. They already use lots of Israeli kit including Python-5 and Derby.

If talking about wild cards the KAI FA-50 could easily punt below that price point, the rub is not knowing what they want beyond “Single engine” hinders understanding what they actually want!

The F-16 Block 60 was ~$ 80 million each, and new build F-16 Block 52s also seem to be expensive, going by the $2.4 billion that Morocco (one of the last customers) paid for their 24 F-16 Block 52s, or the $700 million deal for 8 F-16 Block 52s that Pakistan couldn’t finance. Now PAF already had 18 F-16 Block 52s, so some infrastructure setup already exists to support this type.

Add the AESA radar and other avionics modernisation which may piggy back on the US CAPES program and customization that the IAF will invariably ask for and the cost will only increase. The fighters may be built in different batches and will cost less as one goes from earlier to later batches, but I doubt we’ll get
close to the $45 million figure.

As for the KAI FA-50, it doesn’t even have the capability level of the Tejas Mk1A, so the IAF wouldn’t even bother to look at it.

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