Article Posted on : - Nov 03, 2009

Cheetah (above) and Chetak helicopters of the Indian armed forces. A File Photo.

NEW DELHI (PTI): Plans to replace the Cheetah and Chetak chopper fleet of the Army and Air Force are set to get delayed, because of indecision of the Defence Ministry over conducting of the field trials.

The original plan was to induct 197 Light Utility Helicopters (LUHs) starting from 2009-10 but the process has not moved beyond the Request for Proposal stage and the vendors response to it.

The summer trials were planned to be held by June-July this year but they have not been held, resulting in delay of six months in the fresh acquisition process for the choppers.

Winter trials, whose deadline is February 15, 2010, are also unlikely to be held as no decision has yet been taken on the schedule, Army sources told PTI here.

This is the second time the Rs 3,500 crore tender has been released for inducting 197 LUHs as the first acquisition process was cancelled in 2007 after it was found that Eurocopter had fielded a civilian variant of its chopper for the trials.

The cancellation of the previous process in 2007 had pushed back the deal by four years and the present delays in the field trials would mean that the choppers can start getting inducted only in 2013-14 given there are no further delays in the process, they said.

Three vendors, including Eurocopter, Italian Agusta Westland and Russian Mil Corporation, submitted their responses in December 2008 to the tender issued in June last year.

Defence Ministry's Technical Evaluation Committee completed its evaluations by April-May this year and had said that the participating companies would be soon invited for trials.

The next trials, sources said, would be possible only in April-May next year.

The previous tender was issued in 2003 and American Bell and Eurocopter were shortlisted for field trials.

Of the 197 choppers to be procured, the Army will get 133 choppers and rest 54 will go to IAF for replacing their old French-origin fleet.

The two forces need a total of 384 choppers, of which 197 will be supplied by foreign vendors and the rest would be co-developed by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited with a foreign manufacturer.