Replace SEAKING's with SeaKking's ........ I never said that. I said, consider for buying British Navy SeaKing Mark 7 AEW, AShW and ASW helicopters which will retire from UK service in 2016 and add them with our old ones, it will benefit our entire SeaKing fleet as we already have a maintenance facility and spare parts inventory for our SeaKing's in Pakistan. We can then MLU'ed our old ones, like we did with our old Mirage's and F-16's.
If we have enough money then we can go where ever we want but if one have meager resources then he have to think hard how to save.
Now is the time, when we can have a bargain from UK for these helicopters and our desired spare parts too as one deal.
PLS don't forget that their SEAKING Helo's r equipped with quite advanced systems for AEW, ASW, AShW, Radars, missiles/torpedoes and some other goodies that we don't have or if we do then not in abundance or might not as latest as fitted in them.
I am not against Mi-17, if we go for them, from where u will get the advanced AEW, ASW, AShW, Sonars, naval radars, mission computers, weapons and other systems, still if we get all the things, we don't have the expertise to intergrade them by our self and it will take time and money for the experiments and research.
You can say that we can approach china again, as we already have few Newly built chines Z-9's for that role and we can buy more of these again. but because of the same money problem and limited capabilities of Z-9's our NAVY is reluctant and keeping it as a last resort.
Indian navy is also acquiring 26 more SeaKing helicopters, they r using more then 5 types of naval helo's and yet find SeaKings best for the naval role.
