From Choppy to Chipper: An American makeover of India's military choppers

[ashok321]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...as-military-choppers/articleshow/53916257.cms


WASHINGTON: Few purchases are more demonstrative of the changing nature of US-India ties than the deal that will result in the gradual makeover of the Indian military's helicopter fleet from a largely Russian line-up to a mostly American one.

From choppy to chipper could well be the title of this saga, as India's defense minister Manohar Parrikar arrived in Washington DC for his sixth meeting in less than two years with his US counterpart on Monday, with a sortie thrown in to a chopper manufacturing facility in nearby Philadelphia, where Boeing makes the CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopters.

With 15 on order at a cost of $ 1.1 billion, the storied American Chinook will replace (New Delhi prefers the word "supplement") the haloed Russian Mi-26, the last of which is currently limping out of the Indian Air Force. The legendary Russian machine has written itself into history by transporting heavy stuff ranging from a 25-ton block of ice encasing a 23,000-year old Woolly Mammoth to gargantuan railway equipment from Konkan to Kashmir.

But such is the current weight and momentum of US-India ties that the Russian workhorse has gotten eclipsed by the distinctive twin-rotor U.S chopper that has been part of every American march of folly from Vietnam to Iraq. Also in the chopper mix are 22 AH-64E Apache Longbow attack helicopters worth $ 1.4 billion that New Delhi has contracted to buy almost simultaneously to replace the aging Mi-35, some of which Afghanistan is getting as hand-me-downs.

The 37 choppers, worth $ 2.5 to $ 3 billion in all, to be delivered by 2020, bespeaks of a military relationship that was once so choppy that that the very mention of American military equipment evoked images of bullying and confrontation. And there is more to come.