That said, Victor, why are you so confident that Ka-226 is a fool’s errand?
Well, I’m glad you asked. 🙂
My skepticism of the Ka-226 deal is based on three main points:
Point 1: The manner in which the helo was chosen. The Fennec won a fly-off trial about 6-8 years ago against a Bell product but the award was set aside due to a Bell protest. The next set of trials was on-going with the Ka-226 also in the fray but most lead indicators pointed to another AW119 win but the situation was complicated with the corruption allegations against AugustaWestland. Then all of a sudden in Aug 2014 the trials were cancelled with no explanation[1]. Then Mr. Putin comes into town in November and we find out that the Ka-226 was “chosen”.[2] I don’t know about you but that seems very much like a political decision rather than a fact based technical one. Either money changed hands or arm-twisting occurred to pawn off on India a platform that has had not commercial or military sales success.
Rii, as someone who vehemently opposes the SoKo decision to “choose” the F-35 based on your belief that SoKo was politically arm-twisted, you can see where my skepticism is coming from.
Point 2: India the guinea pig. The helo operates in Russia in small numbers with hardly any operator large enough to be called a “fleet operator”.[3] Which means that India will be the first fleet operator and all the teething pains that will follow. If it was a domestic design, then I would say, it would be well worth it because it would be for a cause greater than just getting this platform up and running. But in this case, India will go through the teething pains, the grinding negotiations with the OEMs to place blame for sh!t that will come up, and India will still not have IPR of the helo. Which means, when it’s time to do upgrades and overhauls, India will be going back to the OEMs with hat in hand. For the AW119 and Bell, multiple organizations have IPR and certifications (due to a very large user base) to do upgrades and overhauls which means there’s already an ecosystem in place to minimize costs and maximize quality. Also, due to the very large user base, India would have gotten pretty much a turn key system where vast amount of the teething pain was already borne by previous users.
Point 3: Length of time it will take to ramp up production in India. This helo is a bust in terms of sales and only a handful are being manufactured a year in a boutique, not mass, production line in its home country. Now, we are to believe that this production line can be ramped up in India to allow for building 40 helo/yr when all of the OEMs are in Russia? If one believes that, one must also believe that Russia is at the forefront of just-in-time manufacturing and spares support. The only saving grace of this helo is that it uses a Turbomeca engine, with whom India already has a relationship.
There are technical and programmatic reasons to be very leery of this deal. And… I think this helo is the pug-fugliest looking thing flying: One step away from being ugly-ugly.
Foot notes:
[1] Source 1
[2] Source 2
[3] Source 3
From there what use is the tail….if you’re dragging a tail your ship handling is degraded and your manoeuvrability is compromised for interposing on a surprise threat axis against a pop-up threat. On top of that, in close to a heavy thats thrashing away in the water (and with a COGAG plant of your own thumping away belowdecks), passive tail ops are degraded anyway.
The tail is not just for passive work: Using the tail and the bow sonar in a multistatic setup can also be used screening or waterspace sanitization at the expense of using active sonar.
The main changes I would like to see on the Kolkata Class are replacing one AK630 on each side with a 8-cell Barak-1 module. There even seems to be a “pedestal” for the STGR on either side of the LW-08. I would also replace the LW-08 with a BEL Revathi.
Sign In
