India to Buy 71 More Russian Helicopters
© RIA Novosti. Yevgeniy Pakhomov18:11 20/02/2012
Posted on 02/20/2012 10:50:49 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
India to Buy 71 More Russian Helicopters
The Indian Air Force (IAF) is planning to procure 71 more Mi-17 V5 helicopters, including 12 for the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Business Standard daily reported on Monday.
These would be in addition to the 80 already ordered from Russia.
Of the 71 helicopters to be ordered, 59 would be provided to the IAF for replacing its old Mi-8 and Mi-17IV choppers and six would go to the Border Security Force.
The remaining six would be distributed among the other central armed police forces, IAF officials said.
On Thursday the IAF put into service the first batch of 80 Mi-17V-5 tactical transport helicopters under a $1.3 billion deal.
Under the 2008 deal, India has already taken delivery of about 20 Russian helicopters, built by the Kazan Helicopter Plant. The remaining helicopters are to be delivered in 2014.
The Mi-17V-5, a utility helicopter, can carry up to 36 passengers or four tons or cargo.
India is one of the world's largest Mi-8 and Mi-17 operators with over 200 aircraft in service. The Mi-8/17 family is the most widely produced helicopter design in history, with over 11,000 sold to more than 110 countries.
India to Buy 71 More Russian Helicopters
© RIA Novosti. Yevgeniy Pakhomov18:11 20/02/2012
Good luck with those flying death traps, guys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5JepmD5BHU&feature=endscreen&NR=1
Guess you should also say that to the Pentagon which is helping the Afghans buy the same choppers. Which are also used by NATO for operations there.
They are among the best high-altitude helicopters around, IIRC, and regularly used in the higher reaches of the Himalayas by the Indian military.
They’re actually fine (and better than some of ours) at high altitude and heavy lift. They just don’t do the gunship role well, and that’s fine - they do dustoff and cargo transport really, really well.
Years ago their was a poster here who was assigned to Egypt as part of Peace Keeping force. He said you would not want to fly on any of the Russian helos. Poor maintenance. No maintenance.
I didn’t think Hindus need helicopters.
Can’t they just simply.....levitate?
(sorry)
Exactly. Every piece of Russian machinery is designed and built with the most incompetent drunk operator in mind.
Everything from Russian powertools to Mach3 aircraft is made as foolproof as possible. It may look rude and lo-tech but it has to be like that.
The reason it still fail often is simply because stupidity of some end users is really unlimited.
Factual reliability of Soviet aircraft statistically on par with Western designs and far ahead considering operational environment.
Not so long ago they had an incident with Tu-154 (727-ski) which had major electric failure due to a pre-flight maintenance error. A pilot managed to land a plane to an abandoned WWII airfield which has complete decayed runway. This runway was too short and a plane ploughed a few hundred yards of thick forrest. Not only everyone on board has walked away from this, a plane itself flew on it’s own from there after a little repair a week later.
If it was Airbus it could be 200 fatalities.
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