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Vital helicopter augmentation for the Indian Navy
All major maritime forces across the globe are highly dependent on navalised helicopters and aircraft for a wide range of operations including the utility and strike roles (both on surface and underwater). Naval helicopters are tasked to tackle most threatening and high-risk of such missions in adverse sea conditions. These airborne vehicles, powered by modern turboshaft engines are capable of operating from small decks (offshore vessels, corvettes, frigates) but also from destroyers and aircraft carriers as advanced scouts. The new modular mission-specific systems allow the same helicopter type to be assigned diverse naval operations.
The Indian Navy, now fifth-largest in the world, currently operates a combined fleet (fixed wing and rotary) of some 240 aircraft, of which about half are rotary-wing. The Indian Navy presently has a fleet of 140 warships including one aircraft carrier, ten guided-missile destroyers, over a dozen frigates, 22 corvettes and several offshore vessels. These frontline assets are however facing acute shortage of naval utility and multi-role helicopters and consequently, these surface vessels could be vulnerable to enemy submarines in the absence of efficient shipborne ASW assets and this handicap could well impact on the Navy's basic operational capabilities.
The Indian Navy's Air Arm includes several decades-old Westland SeaKing Mk.42s, Ka-28s, UH-3Hs and HAL Chetak helicopters for utility, SAR, ASW anti-ship and utility roles. There is also the Ka-31 for AEW and recently ten more have been ordered from Russia. There are a sizeable number of Dhruv ALHs in the Navy's inventory too.
The helicopter numbers-and thus capabilities-are patently inadequate to support the Navy's current and future surface fleet, for which the Indian Navy has a full-fledged master plan, according to which, it plans to induct over 250 naval utility and multi-role helicopters, worth over $15 billion under the two separate procurement programmes: 111 Naval Utility Helicopters (NUHs) and 123 Naval Multi-Role Helicopters (NMRHs). Both the NUH and NMRH are to be built-in-India by selected Indian aerospace companies in collaboration with foreign OEMs as per the 'Strategic Partnership' model of DPP 2016.
Over and above these, seventeen naval ALH Dhruv helicopters will also join the Indian Navy in the next few...