April 02, 2002

'33'

CLARIFICATION ON ACQUISITION OF SPECIAL PURPOSE HELICOPTER

    This is with reference to a news item on Acquisition of Special Purpose Helicopters for the Indian Navy published in an English Daily of New Delhi on April 01, 2002. The story apparently has presented a one sided version. The clarification by this Ministry is as follows:-

    The Navy was trying to acquire organic Air Early Warning (AEW) capability for over a decade. The earlier attempts for procurement of Sea King 42-D helicopters could not fructify leaving a major gap in surveillance capability at sea. It was the experience of the Indian Navy that no aircraft manufacturer has the complete aircraft, which meets all the specific required systems fully integrated at the time of evaluation. The practice therefore is to evaluate the most critical areas and apply professional judgment in extrapolating the capabilities of the platform, systems, designers and manufacturers.  The helicopter purchased was first flown in 1988 and had completed 600 flights by February 1996 when the evaluation team visited Russia. The team evaluated the helicopter with its radar installed and fully operational. Air targets were also detected and seen by the evaluation team. It may be mentioned that the Naval Staff Qualitative Requirements (NSQR) were formulated in Dec 1995. The performance evaluation was carried out in February 1996. The trial directive was issued to the evaluation team and the team was briefed by the concerned Directorates of the Naval Headquarters to check the helicopter as per these NSQRs during their evaluation.

    The AEW helicopters are not very common in the navies of the world. They have relevance particularly where carrier born fighter support is available to counter the detected threat. The AEW radar necessarily have to be bulky and their bulk is normally accommodated in large fixed wing AEW (or AWACS) type of aircraft. AEW radar for helicopter, which is a much smaller platform, invoves considerable design optimization and tradeoffs as compared to normal maritime patrol radars. Taking these two factors i.e. small potential customer base and demanding design efforts it is appreciated that the AEW radar that has been acquired will not be outdated in the same time frame as other avionic equipment.  An AEW helicopter is not expected to be significantly affected in its performance by change in environmental conditions from Russia to India. It is also not correct that KA-31 helicopter is a modified version of KA-28 with AEW radar. This has been confirmed by the Naval Headquarters as well.  The Aviation industry world over follows the 85 per cent learning curve. The number of KA-28 helicopters manufactured will give a production cost of helicopter, which is vastly different and incomparable to the cost of production of four KA-31 helicopters. This fact was taken into consideration while negotiating the price. The comparison between KA-31 and KA-28 helicopters based on their mere similarity in their airframe is not appropriate. It may be clarified that a clear perspective has been maintained by comparing the price of four KA-31 AEW helicopters ($ 92.40 million) with 3 Sea King 42 B helicopters ( UK pound 86.6 million).