NEW DELHI: It’s a double whammy for the armed forces. Already grappling with the high crash rate and low serviceability of their 350 obsolete single-engine Cheetah and Chetak choppers, the prolonged grounding of the around 330 twin-engine ‘Dhruv’ advanced light helicopters (ALHs) has majorly hit military operations and preparedness.
The armed forces bank heavily on multi-role ALHs for ‘sustenance flights’ to forward areas and posts along the unresolved borders with China and Pakistan as well as for observation and reconnaissance, search and rescue missions. “All have suffered major disruptions for over three months now. ALH pilots are also losing flying currency, and forced to make do with simulators,” a senior officer told TOI.
The most affected is over 11.5-lakh strong Army, which has a fleet of over 180 ALHs, including 60 weaponised versions called ‘Rudra’, manufactured by defence PSU Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL).
IAF, in turn, has 75 ALHs, while Navy 24 and Coast Guard 19. The 5.5-tonne ALHs have been military workhorses since their induction began in 2002, with the choppers in the Army alone clocking around 40,000 hours of flying in 2023-24.
The grounding of all the ALHs, ever since a crash killed two Coast Guard pilots and an aircrew diver in Porbandar on Jan 5, has also compounded the long-standing problem of huge shortfalls in rotary-wing birds.
The armed forces, in fact, have projected a requirement of over 1,000 new choppers of different types over the next 10-15 years, including 484 light utility helicopters (LUH) in 3.5-tonne class and 419 Indian multi-role helicopters in 10-15-tonne class. But there has been huge delays in these projects being executed by HAL.
These new choppers are in addition to the 156 ‘Prachand’ light combat helicopters that have to be delivered in 2028-2033 timeframe under the Rs 62,700 crore deal inked with HAL last month.
A small silver lining in the overall grim situation has been the Army’s hiring of some civil choppers for transportation of troops and supply of logistics to remote high-altitude posts along the northern and western borders.
“The use of civil choppers was started by Army’s Northern and Central Commands last Nov due to the huge shortage of helicopters. If that had not been done, it would have become extremely tough to supply troops deployed in forward locations after the grounding of ALHs,” an officer said.
HALis yet to conclusively establish the “root cause” behind the “swashplate fracture” in the ill-fated helicopter that made the Coast Guard pilots lose control of their flying machine over three months ago. Safety checks have found signs of similar material failures in some other ALHs, officials said.
