Armoured body? The cockpit surely would have small arms fire protection and some additional protection for places maybe like fuel tank. But we are not in Soviet era flying Hinds where armour will save the helicopter. It has to be it's self protection suite. I wonder what is the status of integration of that SAAB suite used upon Dhruvs. That is the primary protection for this helicopter.
On Mistral, that's a saga. Gale ki Haddi
Testing should be treated as testing. Operational deployment is something different.
Why the heck are these under IAF. All LCH's should be given to Army aviation corps
Naturally, the IAF has all the experience on attack helicopters. IA will be getting their first attack helicopters only next year.
While not a full fledged attack helo, IA has around 60 Rudras in service and it makes sense for Army aviation corps to have these choppers in order to support mechanized columns. Giving it to IAF would cause issues in terms of operations and coordination
IA will get most of the attack helicopters we have ordered in the near future.
Turf wars. Army aviation should ideally hold all the helicopter fleet actually with IAF having only enough to support its own SAR/transport duties. Nothing more. But it's India.
Raising two attack helicopter fleets will also cause extra financial resources to be used up. Duplication.
It's not that simple. We simply couldn't afford the numbers required to split the helicopter fleet between both forces. It's changing now since we can actually afford it.
Due to the above reason, it made sense to leave attack helicopters to the air force, since it will be cheaper if they operated all the helicopters.
Now that we can afford more helicopters, we are actually aiming for duplication of capabilities. In fact, if you are against duplication, then you would actually be supporting the IAF's stand, since even they have argued against this duplication of capabilities by giving up helicopters to the army.
The air force also needs attack helicopters for its own needs. Since we have soft borders with both our enemies, plenty of targets can be attacked using attack helicopters. In fact, air force operations are more complex and cannot be left to the AAC at this time, whereas the army only needs attack helis to support troops.
It would be vague to say that AAC will use it only for troop support. USA with its Apache, Black hawk and Chinook fleet has show how varied the envelope of operations across the spectrum can be carried out. And because also , the primary function of rotary wing is to support the ground forces, AAC having direct control will enable better and more effective utilisation.
One argument many people put is that apart from targets on ground , having attack helicopters in IAF will allow to shoot down UAVs. Now this is of ofcourse technically possible, but imagine it yourself, a UAV violation across the IB in say Rajasthan, with a IAF LCH fleet in maybe say Jodhpur, or a SPYDER or OSA or other SR SAM units near the border , which has better chance of engaging and destroying the Target earlier?
Across the world we can see that it's actually Short Range SAM systems having greater success against UAVs.
And non of the contemporary Attack Helicopters from Eurocopter Tiger to say Cobra/Viper , has a Air 2 air role against UAVs as primary role, ofcourse they are all technically capable, but non of the forces employ them in those roles.
The pilots and fuel tanks both I think are protected against small arms fire and splinters.
The US does that due to their experience. That's why I stated: cannot be left to the AAC at this time,
Also, they started using helicopters right from the time they were invented.
Since attack heliopters operate inside enemy territory right over OPFOR, it will not have the support of all those ground units. Anyway, the army can do the same. The 6 IA Apaches come with 200 Stingers for example. It's defined by the capability of the helicopter, not the capability of a single service, and both services plan to use the same helicopters.
Also, it's cheaper to engage most UAVs with helicopters.
We've seen IAF's incompetency during the Balakot strike and I couldn't fathom the fact that we're able to successfully taking down our own chopper. It would only be utter foolishness to give these attack helos to IAF and expecting em to effectively coordinate with our mechanized columns
Whole military is run by sifarshi tattus. Bap beta , beti ki jagir, kota dhariyoon ka adaa. Professionalism jaye bhaad mein.
