rohitvats wrote:
The LUH requirement predates the advent of ALH into Indian scene. The first set of tenders were floated in mid-2000s with attendant trials. This collapsed in 2007. Second set of tender and trials collapsed in 2013. When ALH entered service, LUH was clear and present requirement. IA or other Services could not have worked with HAL to conceive, prototype and then produce a LUH over a 7-8 year period.
Rohit-Sir,
Its incredulous that you dont find the above...well...incredulous.
You are saying the 2007 trials failed even when there has been a pressing need for such helis years earlier. Any reasonable person at that juncture would start hedging their bets and find alternate procurement options. ALH rolled into service around 2006 timeframe. If that was accepted by the IA, it should have already asked for the lighter variant development imediately after light category trials failure. 6 years later, the IA's second set of trials failed and yet again. This is horrible horrible risk assessment. Also , when the second trials failed, those in charge of assesing options available in market should have been taken to task. Dont you agree? A decade of search and trials with nothing to show and no alternative POA in place!!!!
But the greed of UPA to milk defense contracts for worth every penny meant that most of the big ticket, and critical projects, got stuck in repeated RFP and RFI and trials. Clear and present requirements in mid-2000s became critical by mid of this decade.
Rohit Sir, with all due respect, again, if the IA and services did not factor UPA govt hurdles into account, what does that tell you about their planning for a product that was needed a decade earlier.
My sincere request to you is whenever you at a purchase decision, from India or abroad, please do consider the urgency of requirement from Services perspective. Take this LUH category. While it is being sold in the media from Siachen perspective, Siachen forms only a small part of the requirement. But serving in this requirement requires special kind of main rotor blades
- One fine day, the OEM which made these blades decided to shut-shop. HAL had been making Cheetah and Chetak helicopters for decades now. But they never bothered with making these special grade of blades. Here, read the full report to understand what issues this created:
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ ... rt-crisis/
Now, my question is, why did not HAL bother to develop these blades and acted simply as go-between the Services and OEM?
I find it strange that you decide to blame HAL for an OEM shutting shop though I do agree that HAL should ve keenly watched its supplier companies. But isn't this a risk with all forreign products ? And who is better aware of average flying hours / year and which components fail is real usage conditions ? The end user IA or HAL? IA knew or should have known the rotor blades need replacement. Shouldn't advance orders have been placed to keep the fleet flying knowing the replacement new product is not coming anytime soon.
The above answers your part of why was LUH order not placed earlier. And unless I'm horribly wrong, HAL went ahead and made LUH on their own. And then pitched it as a competition to import. Question is - why didn't they do it earlier?
Sir, I didnt expect this question from you. As mentioned in the previous post itself, you are asking why HAL did not develop the product earlier even when you know ALH was its first big indigenously developed product sale to IA.
If you are in the market to buy a simpler version of a already-bought product from a vendor , wouldnt you ask him to start working on the simpler version especially when you already like the first product? The services , after two trials , had nothing in hand after 2013 when it could have worked closely with HAL .
Doesn't it show poor risk forecasting on the part of services ?
But one thing I absolutely agree on - rather than going for JV with Russia for Ka-226, we should've simply imported a given number. Even if that number is 120-150. With LUH and Ka-226 being in the same category, they'll compete for export orders as well as domestic requirements. With HAL as a participating entity in both, it simply creates a fvked-up situation. Beyond initial order for 120-150 Ka-226, all the production should've been of LUH. Parallel production of Ka-226 and LUH makes no sense. It would make all the sense to invest in additional production line of LUH.
Fully agree here. But then again, some 15 years later, if the services have agreed to the Ka226 delivery timeframe, then they are really poor at communicating their needs on a priority induction from early 2000s.
( And I stress here that I am only talking specifically about the services's planning & comunication and nothing else)