Indian Air Force inducts natively developed light combat helicopter ‘Prachanda’

https://amritmahotsav.nic.in/spotlight-of-the-week-detail.htm?163

by stenly • 4 years ago

114 140 4 years ago

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stenly• 4 years ago

Made me dig around for more info:

Attack Helicopters Fleet Strength by Country -- https://www.globalfirepower.com/aircraft-helicopters-attack....

Helicopter manufacturer countries -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_manufacturer

TomK32• 4 years ago

Wonder if those strength numbers are pre-war. The Ukrainians claim to have downed over 250 Ruzzian helicopers, half their fleet.

eitland• 4 years ago

Most of these shootdowns are well documented too it seems so I think it is correct.

sofixa2• 4 years ago

Oryx reports "only" 57 confirmed helicopter losses:

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/03/list-of-aircraft-losse...

The real number is probably somewhere between the two, but in any case a massive chunk of the Russian Air Force is destroyed/inoperable.

oneoff786• 4 years ago

I believe that number is all helicopters, not specifically dedicated attack helicopters. So it would include things like transport copters.

That being said, 2 more ded Russian copters in the past 24 hours. Hurrah.

noipv4• 4 years ago

Is it based off of a Soviet or Nato helo or is a clean drawing board product?

sofixa2• 4 years ago

According to Wikipedia it's based on the previous Indian helicopter, the Dhruv, which was developed with German help (MBB, now Airbus) and uses French engines (Turbomeca, now Safran).

rosywoozlechan• 4 years ago

It's a pretty cool aircraft. Hope it serves well.

remarkEon• 4 years ago

Very interested in the supply chain for this. Where do the engines come from?

renewiltord• 4 years ago

The Wikipedia page says the engines are a Safran/HAL joint venture, so it's tech transfer from the French.

sorokod2• 4 years ago

Wikipedia entry

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Prachand

Sounds like some French technology at its core.

walrus01• 4 years ago

French turboshaft engine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safran_Ardiden

If my understanding of history is correct the Indian military was one of the biggest historical customers of the Alouette helicopter, so this is continuing a long historical track record of India buying this tech from France.

bergenty• 4 years ago

Turbomeca but sounds like it was codeveloped with HAL.

iancmceachern• 4 years ago

Super interesting about all the high altitude needs of this and the Cheetah with links in other comments. I remember growing up in Colorado there were certain places and certain mountain passes that most helicopters couldn't do, I even remember one time an Antanov was ad DIA and couldn't take off because of the combination of altitude of the runway and particularly warm temperatures that day

doodlebugging• 4 years ago

I worked on heliportable seismic crews a long time ago all over the western and central US. Many of them used Bell helicopters Jet Rangers. Hueys were still dominant in offshore operations flying out of Louisiana.

In the mountain states there were several bad crashes and enough of them involved Jet Rangers that it acquired the nickname "Death Ranger" on a couple crews I was with. Probably not the helicopter's fault since it has a great reputation everywhere else. Bad things happen when you ignore safety training and maintenance. Those seismic crews were full of dopeheads.

For lifting in the mountains you almost always saw the French Aerospatiale Lama. It was a great helicopter and when equipped with a long enough line could move your drills and assorted equipment anywhere on the slope.

Most pilots back then were Vietnam veterans. You always knew you were in good hands with one of those guys flying. I imagine most are retired by now. One in my area rebuilds helicopters for military museums and other clients. I see him fairly often on low level flights checking everything out on his latest rebuild.

I've loved helicopters since I was a kid growing up near Ft Hood during the Vietnam War. The skies were always filled with helicopters. To this day when I'm inside and hear a chopper I feel the urge to run outside a see which one it is. I am apparently too old now to reasonably expect to be able to grow out of it. They all have distinctive approach and departure sound profiles. The strangest helicopter I have seen was a full-size robotic chopper (large enough for pilot and co-pilot but it had no cockpit windshield at all) that was flying along near my house one day less than a hundred feet off the ground. I looked for any documentation online about it but only found one military chopper that looked like it and no mention of civilian use.

frontman1988• 4 years ago

India could benefit greatly from restricting the emmigration of her top talented people. Right now the smartest Indians work abroad. The increasingly anti-west foreign policy might be early indications of steps towards that.

sumedh• 4 years ago

India could benefit greatly from restricting the emmigration of her top talented people.

Why should the smartest Indians live in India and not move to developed countries?

dmix2• 4 years ago

Because they were told to at gunpoint?

Obviously there should be a better reason than that. But hard leaning nationalists tend to lack better ideas.

twixfel3• 4 years ago

If people want to leave your country, it makes more sense to make them want to stay rather than force them to stay. Besides, in the end, emigration is good for India. Indeed one of the things that India wants from the UK for a trade deal is relaxed visa rules.

i67vw3• 4 years ago

The increasingly anti-west foreign policy might be early indications of steps towards that.

There is no 'anti-west' foreign policy. India follows neutrality in most geo-political nonsense due to its non-alignment philosophy. It has followed it for the past 75 years and will continue to follow it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement

cuteboy19• 4 years ago

The current govt is the most pro western it's ever been. India was usually on the Soviet side of the cold war

suoduandao2• 4 years ago

India seems to genuinely embrace Democracy though, which tends to stick in Western minds much more than the complications of Realpolitik.

mrphoebs7• 4 years ago

India is not anti west. The west has this binary/absolute way of looking at things, "either somebody is with them or against them". India recognises the world is a much more complicated place and sees the world through its own perspective rather than whatever self serving agenda driven perspective the west deems as the only valid one.

India has a long track record of being a non-aligned power. If anything india has been moving closer and closer to the west since the 90s. I think this misinterpretation of india being against the west by some in the west is because they expect their allies to be cronies who'll toe the line.

twixfel3• 4 years ago

But even that perspective that you ascribe to India is reductive. It seems in your view, India are the only ones who understand complexity, the West are just arrogant morons. In reality, everyone's equally just looking out for themselves. In the West we don't care about Kashmir, in India people don't care about Ukraine. It's the same, until one day India will discover that Russia is useless against China and the US and the West are not. And then there will be a realignment. When it happens it won't be about any fancy ideals, it'll just be interests realigning.

uwagar• 4 years ago

india basically wants everyone to know that it wants to goto bed with everyone a little at a time rather than be a wife or a paramour.

howinteresting3• 4 years ago

Indian society is hostile towards women's and LGBTQ freedoms. Why should an Indian woman or LGBTQ person (or both) who has emigrated to a freer society have to go back to that?

achrono4• 4 years ago

It is 'hostile' today also to a whole bunch of other freedoms. It isn't realistic to expect that India will automatically have the same values as the West, and while it is at that to also anticipate & go ahead of the West on that same yardstick, because only the West can define the values of the West.

What India does need to do is to define its own response to the question of how society views LGBTQ. In some cases, in some sections of traditional society, it has developed an answer that is inclusive and friendly. In some other cases it is simply copying from the West, which is what the mainstream discourse is also heading towards. The latter imo is not authentic and will fail India in the long run.

rramadass4• 4 years ago

India has never been "Anti-West" even in the worst of times.

Speech by Indian External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar on this very topic : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUtbsPOE944

langsoul-com• 4 years ago

Is there any point to helicopters anymore with the increasing capabilities of drones?

See Turkish drone use in UA/RU war. For a single helicopter, you could blanket the skies with drones. Now they aren't dirt cheap, $5 million, but that's a hellva lot cheaper than a single heli.

hef19898• 4 years ago

Try fitting a squad, let alone a platoon, into one of those drones...

ok_dad2• 4 years ago

Try fitting an squad into an attack helicopter, though.

sandworm1016• 4 years ago

No drone yet has the situational awareness and reaction time to match a pair of humans in a helicopter. The ability to react quickly to an evolving situation hasnt yet been replicated.

bee_rider6• 4 years ago

Where do attack helicopters fit into modern war, out of curiosity? From my very uninformed point of view -- seems like in a world where man-portable weapons are getting more and more capable, being in a relatively (compared to jets) slowly moving, lightly (?) armored flying vehicle would be pretty terrifying.

chrisseaton• 4 years ago

Attack helicopters are designed for anti-tank, and some anti-infantry and escort. Yes they’re vulnerable. You’re trading off that risk with being able to being able to move extremely quickly and long distance compared to the tanks they’re fighting.

If you want to be very safe you can sit static encased in a metre thick steel shell, but you won’t achieve anything.

rippercushions• 4 years ago

In an army, there is a perennial unsolved debate between the tank and the anti-tank corps. The tank guys think you'd be crazy to be on a battlefield if you're not protected by a solid meter of steel and capable of pulverizing anything you point your turret at, while the anti-tank guys think you're crazy if you're sitting trapped in the highly visible steel cage everybody is shooting at.

simonh2• 4 years ago

I think we’re in a transition period where it looks like drones will probably replace scout and attack helicopters. In the mean time a chopper like this probably still has a role, but I think they’re on the wrong side of history with this.

For now though, while western militaries can afford to hand out LAWS and MANPADS to their troops like sweets, India’s main rivals probably can’t. Yes an individual MANPAD is much cheaper than a chopper, but to defend your entire army from a few dozen choppers you’ll need to hand out a heck of a lot of MANPADS to get the coverage.

The main saving grace of a system like this is that the munitions, unguided rockets and cannon rounds, are pretty cheap. In contrast while drones are much cheaper than the chopper, they’re very expensive as munitions.

pjc50• 4 years ago

The runtime cost of helicopters is pretty terrible, though. You can easily exceed the cost of several expendable "switchblade" type drones simply taking off and flying to the target.

ch4s3• 4 years ago

It seems like helicopters coupled with drones and ground forces could play a role in a rapid advance. They’re probably DOA for urban environments though, just based on what we’re seeing in Ukraine.

closewith4• 4 years ago

The main saving grace of a system like this is that the munitions, unguided rockets and cannon rounds, are pretty cheap. In contrast while drones are much cheaper than the chopper, they’re very expensive as munitions.

Based on the current war in Ukraine, this isn't true at all.

Even relatively expensive loitering munitions (compare to mortars dropped from DJI drones) like the Switchblade 600 cost in the range of $10,000-20,000 per deployment, significantly cheaper than the flight costs for a rotary light attack sortie and much cheaper than even the "low-cost" missile option for the Prachand (the Thales FZ275 LGR - the high-cost option is the MBDA Mistral, which costs $300,000 per deployment).

There is no scenario in which a manned rotary craft competes with a drone on cost.

unity1001• 4 years ago

western militaries can afford to hand out LAWS and MANPADS to their troops like sweets

They can't. These are expensive in the West due to the privatized defense industry racking up prices. Russia and China can. And countries like India, who buy from them cheap, can.

Sakos3• 4 years ago

Manpads really aren't all that effective against helicopters. I don't think anything has fundamentally changed in the past 40ish years in regards to the ubiquitousness of manpads or how they work. Helicopters are comparatively cheap, effective, flexible and difficult to shoot down without proper AA, but that's what combined arms is for, or a lot of luck. Only about 40 helicopters were lost to hostile fire in Iraq from 2004-2009. I'd say the flexibility is the main reason why you can't get rid of helicopters in modern armies. There are just things that planes can't do without protected airspace or a controlled airfield.

sandworm1016• 4 years ago

Manpads have changed massively. There are still 30+yo systems in the field, which gives a false impression of the tech, but there are also very sophisticated new systems too.

_kbh_2• 4 years ago

Only about 40 helicopters were lost to hostile fire in Iraq from 2004-2009

Russia has lost that many helicopters in about 9 months in Ukraine, id say the effectiveness of helicopters is largely dependent on the capabilities of your opponent and whether or not you can gain air superiority.

dfc3• 4 years ago

Russian helicopters have had a rough time because of Stingers in Afghanistan and they do not seem to be fairing a lot better in Ukraine.

blamazon• 4 years ago

Via the wiki article for this heli:

The impetus for the development of the LCH Prachand came in the form of the Kargil War, a conflict fought between India and neighbouring Pakistan in 1999, which revealed the Indian armed forces lacked a suitable armed rotorcraft capable of operating unrestricted in the high-altitude theatre.

In that conflict, Pakistan downed more than one Indian MiG with a man-pad, so I presume this scenario is not lost on India w.r.t. development of this aircraft.

lm28469• 4 years ago

I mean, nothing fits into modern war when cheap portable anti tank and air defense system exist.

It's always been the same, I think people are confused because for decades the US has been attacking AK47 wielding farmers with $$$ cutting edge technology but wars between relatively equivalent forces is always a blood bath, everything you can come up with has a cheaper counter measure

stickfigure• 4 years ago

Perun made a video about this:

End of the Helicopter? (no) - MANPADS and helicopter losses in Ukraine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoKpXvj41A

The TL;DR is "It's complicated".

rg111• 4 years ago

India has terrains and fronts, and enemies where such equipment will prove valuable.

sandworm1016• 4 years ago

That rotor looks like it is made out of lego. Vertical box structures, square intakes... i dont see any attention to "stealth" features. It looks like an overweight cobra or apache. Im not convinced.

Existenceblinks• 4 years ago

As a thai whose nation adopted lots of Pali/Sanskrit words, I have to look up the word origin https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/pracanda because I suddenly understand the meaning of "Prachan", in thai it means "confront". Indian naming always gives sci-fi kind of vibe.

rishabhd• 4 years ago

प्रचंड or Prachand also means super aggressive / wanton form

sandworm1016• 4 years ago

> Indian naming always gives sci-fi kind of vibe.

In an ironic twist of linguistic history, most US combat helicopters were given American "indian" names (Apache, Comanche, Black Hawk etc). I like such conventions. I wish that more nations adopted and stuck to them when introducing new equipment.

EliRivers• 4 years ago

Apropos of nothing much but just on the general theme, when I worked for a few defence companies in Europe, it was common to rename equipment or systems for the Australian market. We'd come up with some way to justify the renaming; often there was some small change or configuration alteration we could point to. We had to rename feminine sounding names or acronyms to something that sounded suitably roughty-toughty for the Australian market.

I genuinely never knew how necessary that was; if it was just something we'd ended up doing based on rumour and speculation, or if re-acronyming something from AMELIE to TOUGHGUY really did make it more likely to get the sale in Australia.

ihm• 4 years ago

I always found that particular convention incredibly gruesome and dystopian.

The US genocided the native Americans and then use their names on their death machines they use for killing other people.

sveme• 4 years ago

German tanks have always(?) been named after mammals, mostly after cats.

rtev2• 4 years ago

Why continue to use the incorrect and offensive term “indians”? You even quoted it, so I’m confused why you used it at all.

cafard• 4 years ago

Well, the Royal Navy had "tribal class" destroyers, of which I remember only the HMS Ashanti, and perhaps the Pathan. Whether the eponymous "tribes" appreciated the tributes, I never heard.

The US Navy has some well-understood conventions, including leading-class warships (one battleships, now nuclear submarines) named after states, aircraft carriers named after earlier warships (Enterprise, Wasp) or battles (Yorktown, Saratoga).

RalfWausE• 4 years ago

Its the same with our (german) tanks: Its allways a big cat since WWII

kumarvvr• 4 years ago

Most Indian defense systems are named in Sanskrit.

Agni, Vayu, Brahmos, Prithvi, etc.

devnull3• 4 years ago

Brahmos

Nitpick: It is actually amalgamation of Indian & Russian rivers. Brahmaputra (India) and Moskva (Russia)

lifeisstillgood3• 4 years ago

My takeaway is that India can use this as a means to get greater internal investment - every $Xm dollars a copter costa is not sent to US firms but becomes grist to the mill for Indian metalworkers, Indian engine manufacturers etc etc.

Just keep the corruption out of the process and let the multiplier do its work.

sitkack3• 4 years ago

India buys a lot of its arms from former Soviet countries.

scriptproof• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_India...

Look at origin. Very few equipment come from the USA.

lifeisstillgood3• 4 years ago

My point was more that spending government dollars on internally sourced services is always a better multiplier (for that governments economy).

TIL there is move in California to have UoC source it's cafeteria meals direct from California farmers (shortening the supply chain, increasing profits and consistent income for farmers)

I know that has a lot of issues but I think it is a very appealing move. Maybe farmers co-ops next?

boruto• 4 years ago

But should it be seen like that? I guess they just think about uninterrupted supplies during war time and cost of imported labour.

lifeisstillgood3• 4 years ago

Yes I think it should be seen that way

1. Governments spending tax dollars should make efforts to keep the multiplier in their economy. For something like a hi-tech helicopter there will be a supply chain hundreds of firms long, many small and looking to grow and provide jobs.

2. India has an advantage (certainly compared to US purchases, maybe less to Soviet via China) in labour costs - building a helicopter to the "same" spec in India just costs less than in Ohio, and that means more copter for your rupee

3. Pretty much every government in wartime finds out its supply chains are borked - there is always a shell crisis. It's one reason the US armed forces are so effective - they have been in live wars for thirty years. No chance for a torpedo to be developed that simply does not explode.

squarefoot3• 4 years ago

Big warning here: India is silently on Russia's side wrt the invasion in Ukraine, and Russia badly needs both allies and new weapons. Not sure however if India want to risk sanctions for jumping from a silent alliance to a de facto support by supplying Russia with combat helicopters and/or spare parts. They probably already received lots of calls from the Kremlin.

nikhizzle• 4 years ago

Do you have evidence? India was one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, and I believe their current stance is a result of their fidelity to the movements ideals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement

squarefoot3• 4 years ago

Having evidence is impossible at this point, however there are some hints.

https://www.politico.eu/article/indias-stance-on-the-ukraine...

nradov2• 4 years ago

New attack and scout helicopters are probably not on the top of Russia's shopping list for foreign weapons purchases. Their own tactical helicopters have not performed well against Ukrainian air defenses and there's no reason to think these Indian helicopters would fare any better.

More likely Russia is trying to obtain spare parts to keep their existing weapons operating. They're working hard to source those through neutral countries, either purchasing locally manufactured products or employing straw buyers to purchase from Western manufacturers.

factorialboy• 4 years ago

Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

rramadass4• 4 years ago

Do not impugn motives/assign agenda where there are none. This is not a place to peddle conspiracy theories.

See the videos of Indian Minister of External Affairs, S.Jaishankar on Youtube for edification.

UltraViolence• 4 years ago

I believe current trends in warfare are extremely interesting. I've come to the conclusion that we're slowly reverting towards WWI trench warfare once again.

Tanks and aircraft have become extremely vulnerable due to smart munitions with shaped charge warheads and anti-aircraft missiles (both SAM and MANPADS). This means that breaking through enemy lines becomes all but impossible or only at enormous human cost.

It wouldn't surprise me if chemical warfare is once again used to break the stalemate. Other options are autonomous killing machines and drone swarms (which we're already seeing to some extent).

Indian Air Force inducts natively developed light combat helicopter ‘Prachanda’

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