Army hurries chopper deal (India)

27th Nov 2011 SUMAN SHARMA  sunday-guardian.com

NEW DELHI | he Ministry of Defence (MoD), in a hurry to acquire 197 light utility helicopters, has decided to drop the crucial requirement of High Altitude Hover-Out-Of-Ground-Effect (HOGE) at 6,000-metre pressure altitude, from the tender for a Rs 3000 cr deal. These choppers will replace 1970s vintage Chetaks and Cheetahs. This clause has delayed the purchase for years, as contenders could not meet the requirement. As a result, the helicopters will not be able to hover in high-altitude war zones like the Siachen Glacier.

The Defence Procurement Board (DPB), chaired by the Defence Secretary, told the Army on Monday to do away with this requirement in the Request for Proposal (RFP), or tender, so that the process moves forward.

Senior military experts believe, however, that this absence will not be a major operational hurdle.

Former Air Chief Fali H. Major, who has been a helicopter pilot in the IAF, told The Sunday Guardian, "This was an overrated QR (qualitative requirement), and is not required in the Indian context. It's an operational requirement, but if it's not there, it won't affect operations, and if a chopper can hover up to 5 km out of ground, it's good enough."

Former Air Chief S. Krishnaswamy said, "I am not sure if many helicopters can fulfil this requirement, very few people in the world can do it. It was definitely a stringent operational requirement. With a practical payload if a chopper can hover close to ground, it is good enough."

Of the 197 helicopters meant for reconnaissance, surveillance and logistic support, 64 are for the IAF, while the remaining 133 are for the Army. The total number of helicopters is 384, of which 197 will be purchased and the remaining 187 will be produced under licence by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Initially, there were five contenders — Eurocopter, Bell Helicopters, Agusta Westland, and Russian Kamov. The final competition is now between Russian Kamov 226T offered by ROE and AS550C3 offered by Eurocopter.

There has been a clash of opinion between the IAF and the Indian Army over this procurement, as the Army was made the lead service in this deal, while the IAF had argued that it should be made the lead service as it had the infrastructure for evaluation and testing of critical parameters such as the high altitude HOGE in these choppers.

The new helicopters will be used for high altitude surveillance and logistics. The delay has hit the Indian Army's modernisation plans. The helicopter inventory of the Army is diminishing and procurement of these 197 choppers is said to be very critical in terms of operational necessity and defence preparedness.

The deal has been marred by controversies, irregularities, anonymous complaints about middlemen, kickbacks and procurement deviations. In the interests of transparency the MoD had cancelled the tender in 2007, when the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) asked it to submit an explanation following an unprecedented objection raised by former National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan. The submitted report showed that the procurement process did not follow set down guidelines.

The tender was re-issued in July 2008, and the short-listed candidates again showed deviations. One deviation shown by Eurocopter was that it would require permanent attachments for carrying two stretchers and removal of the co-pilot's seat. Russian ROE's Kamov 226T had deviations with regard to its empty weight and size.

A major problem for ROE was that the engine to be fitted on Kamov 226T would be Arrius 2G1, which was not yet certified. Yet another short-listed vendor, who was later shown the door, was Anglo-Italian Agusta Westland, which appealed to the MoD to consider the difference in the nomenclature of the engine of AW119, which was fielded. After coming close to a second cancellation last year in May, the procurement process went ahead with Eurocopter and Kamov, with Agusta being ousted from the competition.

Eurocopter already has business tie-ups with the state-owned HAL. The contract will follow the old Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP-2006), and will have to fulfil a 50% offset obligation as per the tender requirement.

The old tender got cancelled in December 2007, at the behest of the MoD, after middlemen, kickbacks and procurement deviations came to light. The 197 choppers in the old tender were meant only for the Army, but later the IAF too pitched in with their requirement of the same class of choppers, and a joint tender was decided on.