Coast Guard floats $200 million tender for 16 choppers

[Thundersword]

^^^^ WOW!!! looks amazing its photoshop rite? most likely this is gonna be waaay too costly :'(

 

[Abingdonboy]

Eurocopter, Sikorsky, Agusta in Race for USD 300 Mn Coast Guard Tender

American Sikorsky, Italian Agusta Westland and European Eurocopter are race to supply 16 light twin-engine choppers to the Indian Coast Guard for a USD 300 million tender.

"The RFP to procure these choppers was issued by the Coast guard in May this year and the bidders have been asked to submit their responses by the end of this year,” Coast Guard sources revealed to Defencenow.com.

The procurement is part of Coast Guard efforts to prevent any 26/11 type attack and was cleared during the February 2009 Cabinet Committee on Security meeting.

Agusta Westland is offering its AW 109; Eurocopter with Panther and Sikorsky with S-97 Raider will take part in the tender.

According to the RFP, the Coast Guard wants these choppers to be equipped with surveillance devices to carry out search and rescue roles in coastal areas, they said.

Deployment of the choppers on offshore patrol vessels and other large-size ships of the Coast Guard will help in expanding its reach in the maritime zone to locate suspicious boats and other vessels, they said.

The choppers will also have light and medium machine guns on board.

Two interesting, but not surprising facts, to be pulled from the article: 1) no Russian platform asked for/responded, I guess MoD has had enough of the delays or alternatively, and perhaps more interesting, the Russians decided not to take part because going by recent defence contracts (MMRCA, Attack helo, LUH etc) it isn't worth their time. Both scenarios would be interesting and a massive departure from the norm given previous defence procurements. 2) this had been cleared BACK IN 2009!! this is not as surprising just very frustrating.



Also regarding S-97, I'm not sure this isn't a typo given it is a craft still in the design phase with nom real timeline for inductions. It also doesn't seem to fit the ICG's needs.