- India has a crippling shortage of military helicopters. In the civilian space too, the helicopter transport sector has not achieved anything close to full potential.
- Indian military choppers have an unfortunate record of crashes. The most infamous crash claimed the life of General Bipin Rawat among others in December 2021
- China has roughly five times the number of military helicopters that India has and Pakistan about the same number as India. Both these countries have more advanced choppers as compared to India.
- India’s helicopter fleet is ageing. Also, India has hardly leveraged its helicopter civilian transport potential.
- The 613 acre factory which is being inaugurated on 6th February is owned by Hindustan Aeronauticals Ltd, India’s foremost defence PSU. It has set a target of production and sale of helicopters worth INR 4 trillion in the next 20 years.
- The Indian Government has stated a policy of near-total indigenisation of all military hardware in order to reduce its dependence on foreign suppliers, conserve foreign exchange and create domain knowledge in the Indian ecosystem. Most military hardware is now out of reach for foreign suppliers for India has banned their imports. Indigenisation also improves repairs and maintenance turnarounds.
- The challenge is that both China and Pakistan are now ahead of India in all and some aspects, respectively, of military equipment. Indigenisation and creation of a domestic ecosystem is a time-consuming exercise. India ostensibly believes that it has the time to play catch up – something that in defence industry translates to timelines of a a few years if not decades.
- Nevertheless, over the last few years, India has represented a moving and no longer a static target, in terms of defence modernisation to these two traditional rivals.
- The key for HAL now is to continually work on improving the rotorcraft so as to be able to prove more than a match in the air to those of our adversaries.
