Submarine-hunting copters for Navy and new guns for Army : The Tribune India

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Submarine-hunting copters for Navy and new guns for Army

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Defence (MoD), in a major development, has okayed two separate types of helicopters for the Navy, including the ones that will hunt submarines, besides 150 India-made artillery guns.

Submarine-hunting copters for Navy and new guns for Army

The utility helicopters will be used in attack missions as well as for search, rescue and surveillance operations. — Photo for representation



Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 25

The Ministry of Defence (MoD), in a major development, has okayed two separate types of helicopters for the Navy, including the ones that will hunt submarines, besides 150 India-made artillery guns.

The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) at its meeting, chaired by Nirmala Sitharaman today accorded approval to several projects that total to nearly Rs 46,000 crore.

To enhance the capability of Navy at sea, the DAC has also been granted procurement of 24 anti-submarine capable Multi Role Helicopters, which are an integral part of the frontline warships like the aircraft crriers, destroyers, frigates and corvettes. Availability of MRH with the Navy would plug the existing capability gap and will be taken through the government to government route from the US and the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin is the supplier.

Chinese submarines routinely troll the Indian Ocean and the ability to pick out these is needed. Currently, the Navy uses the Sea King Mk42B and the Kamov-28 copters in an ASW role. Both are of the 1980s vintage design and are now being upgraded. There are about 20 such copters.

Marine helicopters are rugged-ized versions of helicopters used by land or air forces. Sea salinity necessitates a different paint coating while equipment, avionics and radars are totally different.

The US  Department of Defence had, in latest report “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2017”, said: “These submarine patrols demonstrate the PLAN’s emerging capability both to protect China’s SLOCs (sea lanes of communication) and to increase China’s power projection into the Indian Ocean.”

In another major breakthrough, the DAC also granted approval to a few other proposals amounting to approximately Rs. 24,879 crore, which included approval for procurement of 150 numbers of Indigenously Designed and Developed 155 mm Advanced Towed Artillery Gun Systems (ATAGS) for the Indian Army at an approximate cost of Rs 3,364 crore. These guns have been indigenously designed and developed by DRDO and will be manufactured by private companies by Tata and Bharat Forge.

The DAC also approved procurement of 111 Naval utility helicopters (NUH) for the Indian Navy at a cost of over Rs 21,000 crore. This is the first project under the MoD’s prestigious Strategic Partnership (SP) Model that aims at providing significant fillip to the government’s ‘Make in India’ programme.

SP Model envisages indigenous manufacturing of major defence platforms by an Indian strategic partner, who will collaborate with foreign OEM, acquire niche technologies and set up production facilities in the country. The model has a long-term vision of promoting India as a manufacturing hub for defence equipment thus enhancing self-sufficiency and establishing an industrial and Research and Development ecosystem, capable of meeting the future requirements of the Armed Forces.

In addition, procurement of 14 vertically launched Short Range Missile Systems was also cleared by the DAC. Of these, 10 systems will be indigenously developed. These systems will boost the self-defence capability of ships against anti-ship missiles.

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