INDIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY APPROVES $700 MILLION IN DEFENSE PURCHASES, BUT NO AVRO REPLACEMENT
NEW DELHI - At a meeting of the Defense Acquisition Council on December 17, the Indian Defense Ministry green-lighted military purchasing proposals worth INR44.4 billion ($696 million). The purchases include the procurement of four helicopters for survey vessels, an upgrade to the nation's electronic warfare system and an acquisition of a platform system for transporting military equipment. One long-standing procurement requirement was deferred, however. This involves the replacement of the Indian Air Force' locally constructed fleet of HS 748 Avros transport aircraft.
The Avros were brought into service in the 1960s and they are badly in need of a modern successor. India's MoD first issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) in 2012 (a similar one followed on May 9, 2013) regarding the procurement of 56 new twin-engine cargo aircraft capable of handling a 6-8-ton payload and reaching a cruise speed of 500 mph, and having a range of 1,600-1,700 miles.
Under the terms floated, the chosen foreign vendor would provide 16 units in fly-away condition, with the remainder built in India under license with a local manufacturer.
But the Avro replacement effort has become increasingly troubled and indicative of the problems with India's procurement pipeline. To begin with, any foreign vendor must partner with an Indian company and the largest, most experienced aerospace firm - HAL - is already stretched in terms of its order book. Added to this is the pressure in political circles to restrict local private ventures from involvement in the project as a means of protecting the public sector. Then there is the matter of funding -from which India's defense capitalization budget has often proven inadequate.
Due to this confluence of factors - funding, partnership tie-ins with local industry and private/public sector tensions - the Defense Acquisition Council has thrice now deferred the program (once in December 2013, again on February 25, 2014, and now on December 17).
The decision to defer the project by the Defense Acquisition Council puts a joint bid by European aerospace giant Airbus Defense & Space and India's Tata Advanced Systems Ltd on ice for now. The partners had offered up the Airbus C-295 airlifter as a viable alternative to fill the Avros replacement requirement, offering 56 new-build aircraft valued at $3 billion.
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