Indian Navy To Get Three Submarine-Hunting Helicopters From US By Year-End

The Indian Navy will get the first three of the 24 Lockheed Martin-Sikorsky MH-60R multi-role helicopters by the end of this year that it had ordered for last year. These will greatly boost the force’s anti-submarine and surveillance capacities.

The government-to-government contract for the supply of the 24 hepters (short for ‘helicopters’ in military parlance), nicknamed ‘Deadly Romeos’, worth Rs 17,500 crore was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in February last year before the arrival of then US President Donald Trump in New Delhi.

The induction of the ‘Deadly Romeos’ will fill a critical void left by the deinduction of Sea King 42/42A helicopter fleet nearly two decades ago.

Following that, the navy has been trying to induct multi-role helicopters, a key operational necessity, for the last 15 years without any success.

The ‘Deadly Romeos’ will be the mainstay of the navy’s anti-submarine/anti-ship warfare (ASuW) and boost the force’s airborne early warning capabilities.

The twin-engine hepters will be armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, MK 54 torpedoes and advanced precision weapons, and can operate from anti-aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates.

The entire lot of 24 hepters will be delivered to India by the end of 2024. An Indian Navy crew, including 15 officers, started their training to operate the ‘Deadly Romeos’ at the Lockheed Martin manufacturing facility at Pensacola, Florida, Monday (7 June).

This training has been delayed due to the pandemic-induced global shutdowns, but have started in earnest now, say top Indian Navy officers.

The comprehensive deal for acquiring these hepters through the foreign military sales route includes supply of spare parts, air-to-ground weapons support and training of pilots and ground crew.

The Indian Navy team undergoing training in the US right now will bring back the first of the two hepters sometime next month and the third will be delivered by the end of this year.

Along with Boeing’s state-of-art Poseidon-8I advanced maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare (ASuW) aircraft, the MH-60R hepters will greatly enhance the navy’s submarine-hunting capabilities.

The navy is also in the process of inducting 30 armed MQ-9B Sea Guardian drones manufactured by US-based General Atomics.

These drones will act as force-multipliers and place the Indian Navy in the top league of blue water navies of advanced powers.

In November last year, the Indian Navy took on lease two Sea Guardian drones from the US for a one-year period.

India has asked Lockheed Martin to modify the MH-60R helicopters to reduce their footprints (the space they occupy) on board ships.

Thus, the Indian variant of the MH-60R will have folding main rotors and a hinged tail. All these modifications will be carried out at the manufacturer’s facilities at Owego, New York and Stratford, Connecticut.

The first three ‘Deadly Romeos’ that the Indian Navy will be getting were actually meant for the US Navy and are naval versions of the Sikorsky UH-60 ‘Black Hawk’ hepters that are part of the Sikorsky S-70 family.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is learnt to have asked the Ministry of Defence to hasten the process of getting a strategic partner for making naval utility helicopters (NUH).

The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) cleared the Rs 21,738 crore NUH project in August 2018, but there has been no progress till date in getting a strategic partner who can tie up with a foreign original equipment manufacturer to make these hepters in India. .

The NUH hepters are urgently required to replace the outdated fleet of French-designed Chetak hepters that the Indian Navy uses now.