'Make in India' push: TASL, Bell Helicopter to collaborate on defence modernization initiative

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The ALH is an extremely succesful project and has been succesfully evolved throughout the years, the sole soe point is the N-ALH that fell into an awkward weight class for the navy (too heavy for its small vessels but to limited in range and payload for larger vessels and the ASW role). Compouding this were some issues with fitting an adequate ASW suite and developing the automatic blade folding system (now devloped by the way).

Not many helos in the world are in service in land and naval roles and it was always a rather ambitious effort to create a one fit solution for all services but HAL should be applauded for trying.

Today, the ALH serves at the Siachin Glaciar and the plains of Rajasthan and everywhere in between, this is no small feat. As far as the Indian navy is concerned, clearly they have immense confidence in the platform as they they employ the ALH in the critical role of Search and Rescue, in fact they are orderign 16 state of the art Mk.3 to expand their fleet further (with more orders likely in the future), as is the ICG.


The IAF actually operates both "skid" and wheeled variants of the ALH interestingly (as does the BSF incidentally), and they look absolutely stunning in IAF grey:

On a side not, interestingly, the IAF has also ordered the Rudra:

Thanks ! But there is Still a Naval Variant used specifically Transport and SAR roles correct!

But, It still doesn't answer my 1st Question which is IS the Bell The Same Weight Class as the Dhruv? if yes why not improve the Naval variant of the dhruv to have an imported naval system ? If Not - more details of the Bell and its system pls