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DEFENCE:
HELICOPTERS
Losing
Might
Overstretched
and underemployed, the chopper fleet of the IAF is its soft underbelly—last
week's MI-8 crash only corroborates that fact
By
Ninad
D. Sheth
The
time: 12.17 p.m., November 12. The place: Koteshwar air force base near
the Indo-Pak border east of the Rann of Kutch. An MI-8 helicopter of the
Indian Air Force takes off with 12 officers on board on a routine area
familiarisation mission. Flying over the marshes, they spot three unidentified
boats. To find out if they are friends or foes, Squadron Leader Anil Sharma
brings down the chopper to 50 m above the slushy waters. But within seconds
the MI-8 disintegrates and comes down in a fireball. There are only five
survivors. Among the dead is Sharma. The IAF is still clueless about the
cause of the crash though two of the survivors confirm that the 25-year-old
chopper took off 30 minutes late "because there was some snag".
Barely
had the Indian Air Force (IAF) begun to comprehend the crashes in its
MIG-21 fleet when fresh trouble confronted it. Now it's the choppers that's
giving the air force brass the jitters. Over the past five months, as
many as five Cheetah helicopters-the backbone of scouting, evacuation
and patrol missions in the sensitive Northern Command-have crashed.
 While
the air force sources point to increased sorties and detrimental flying
conditions as cause for these accidents, the IAF has actually doubled
the sorties the Cheetah makes in the Northern Command since the war in
Kargil.
The number
of choppers though has remained the same. This has led to what one senior
IAF official-based in a forward chopper squadron-calls "crashes due
to the fatigue factor". Says Air-Vice Marshall Kapil Kak, deputy
director of the Delhi-based Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses
(IDSA): "The chopper fleet is virtually at war and the crash rate
is normal attrition in these adverse conditions."
The Cheetah's
plight is particularly worrying because it is the only helicopter in the
country that can operate at heights of 16,000 ft. Says Kak: "The
Cheetah-meant to fly 30 hours a month-is logging up to 70 hours. This
is overstretching things and only an increase in chopper numbers can take
the pressure off."
 But
why lose sleep over a few choppers? To the uninitiated, here's a rundown
on what role choppers play in the forces. While they may not be sleek
like strike aircraft, their importance in the battle zone cannot be exaggerated.
Apart from RECCE, carrying payload and operating as flying ambulances,
they are crucial in hunt and kill ops. They can strike with pinpoint accuracy
at battlefield targets missed by fighters. They can even be used to drop
a commando force behind enemy lines. Small choppers like the Cheetah are
also used as scouts to direct fire from strike aircraft like the Mirage
2000. Commanders can call in chopper support from nearby posts while fighter
planes may take longer to arrive. To soldiers in India's forward posts
such as Siachen the venerable Cheetah is like an umbilical cord, which
if severed, could cut them off from their bases.
To be sure,
it is not the Cheetah alone that has lost its edge-the entire helicopter
fleet of the IAF is crippled by serious flaws.
Take, for
instance, the transport squadrons. With the IAF doubling its supply rate
in the northern sector alone to 10,000 tonnes of payload, there is tremendous
pressure on its helicopters. The bulk of the burden is borne by the MI-17
which is also employed in VIP duty and disaster management situations.
To augment its transport fleet, the IAF went in for the Russian made MI-26.
Based in Adampur, the Russian made MI-26-the largest helicopter in the
world- can ferry 20 tonnes of payload, comparable to what the US C-130
Hercules aircraft carries. But in what is proving to be a case of acute
embarrassment to the IAF the entire lot of 10 MI-26s has been grounded.
The problem: India has no maintenance facilities for these giants and
they are sent to Russia even for minor repairs.
Pg. 2
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