Indian Navy's Show Of Strength For China Has A Weak Link - Agusta

New Delhi: Four ships of the Indian Navy's Eastern Command have set sail on Wednesday on a two and a half month deployment through areas that the Chinese Navy considers its own. The ships are headed for Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Russia and eventually the United States as part of what the Navy calls "a demonstration of its operational reach and commitment to India's 'Act East' policy."

The Rear Admiral commanding the fleet knows that it enters China's backyard, the South China Sea, with a glaring operational shortfall. He has just a single anti-submarine helicopter between the four warships: a Westland Sea King, variant of a chopper that first entered service with the Indian Navy 45 years ago.

The other two helicopters on the decks of the warships are French-designed Chetak helicopters which began flying in India 55 years ago. The Chetaks are unarmed, have no ability to track enemy submarines and serve only a very basic utility role.

The sad state of the Indian Navy's helicopter fleet comes at a time when several state-of-the-art warships are being built at Indian shipyards, perhaps the biggest success of this government's Make-In-India campaign to reduce the import of military equipment. In fact, two of these warships, the guided missile frigates INS Satpura and INS Sahyadri are part of the fleet sailing to the South China Seas. Designed to carry four large anti-submarine helicopters between them, they are making do with the single and elderly Sea King.
 The programme to replace hundreds of archaic Indian Navy helicopters, already painfully slow, has been further enervated by the AgustaWestland scam, which involved a corrupt deal for the Air Force to buy 12 VIP helicopters. Agusta and its parent company Finmecannica are now banned from getting government orders.

Last year, the Defence Ministry cleared an essential upgrade for 10 Russia-built Kamov Ka-28 helicopters, which first entered the Navy in the eighties. The deal was worth 2,100 crores. But advanced surveillance and radar equipment that was to be added is made by Selex Galileo, a subsidiary of Finmecannica. The Selex systems meant to be installed included infrared sensors to detect targets in low visibility along with a phased array radar to lock onto small targets at sea.

 NDTV has learned that there is no clear indicator on whether the government will go ahead with modernizing the Russian helicopters for this reason, even though rules allow for Finmecannica systems if the firm is a subcontractor and not the main vendor- in this case, the supplier of the helicopters.

The elderly Sea King anti-submarine helicopters like the one sent with the fleet of warships this week were manufactured by Westland, part of the Finmeccanica chain of companies.  Though less than ten of the old choppers are thought to remain fully operational, there is a concern that spares for the ones that are used may be affected as a fallout of the ongoing controversy. Senior sources in the Indian Navy have told NDTV that while the Defence Ministry categorically allows the Navy to source spares for these choppers from Agusta because these were old purchases, there is very little clarity on how to deal with the black-listed company in the future. 
 Separately, there has there no significant progress in replacing the Sea King with a more modern helicopter. In 2014, the government cleared a 1800 crore deal to acquire 16 multi-role helicopters. One of the two helicopters shortlisted was the European NH-90, which was later blacklisted since it too is manufactured by a consortium that included Finmeccanica. Concerned about the glaring lack of Naval choppers, the government decided to go ahead with negotiations with the second shortlisted firm, Sikorsky. But in November last year, Sikorsky was acquired by US aviation major Lockheed Martin, and price negotiations for the helicopters have stalled with the new management.

A larger deal for 120 Naval multi-role helicopters worth upwards of US $8 billion has not progressed beyond a very preliminary Request for Information (RFI) stage, and there has been no progress in replacing the outdated Chetak Light Utility Choppers of the Navy.

Caught in the middle of a procurement nightmare entirely out of its control, the Indian Navy continues to make do with old, obsolete helicopters completely at odds with its reputation of being a world-class force capable of projecting force far from India's shores.