New tender gives Boeing's AH-64D Apache a second chance:India

The Indian Ministry of Defence yesterday confirmed the rumors that it has scraped the tender for 22 attack helicopters. According to the Indian Defence Ministry spokesman the tender had to be canceled since the remaining three companies still participating in the tender were unable to meet the military’s requirement."The Request for Proposals (RFP) for the 22 attack helicopters have been retracted and cancelled, as the three offers received from foreign defence companies did not meet the Staff Qualitative Requirements set by the government,” the spokesman said.

In May 2008, New Delhi has begun a competition to procure 22 attack helicopters for its air force. The aircraft are intended to replace the ageing Mil Mi-25 and Mi-35 fleets.India requested a 2.5 tonne twin-engined copter with all-weather and terrain ability. The new copter should also be highly manoeuvrable and able to deploy 20mm turret guns, rockets, air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. The new attack helicopter should also be able to employ air-to-ground, fire-and-forget missiles with a range of at least seven kilometers. Beyond that it should be equipped with anti-armour capabilities and be capable of operating at high altitudes such as in the Kashmir's mountain borders with Pakistan with day-and-night operations capabilities.

With a unit price of $25 million (including armament and equipment), the first two helicopters were intended to be delivered within two years after contract signing with the final copter delivered within 36 months.Initially seven companies participated the tender with their products: AgustaWestland’s AW129, Bell’s AH-1Z SuperCobra, Boeing’s AH-64D Apache Longbow, Eurocopter’s Tiger HAD, Kamov’s Ka-50, Mil’s Mi-28 NE and the national Hindustan Aeronautics’s Light Combat Helicopter.

However, at the final stage only three companies (AgustaWestland, Eurocopter and Mil) left over while the US companies as quit the race.Bell, a unit of Textron withdrew its participation since the AH-1Z Cobra is not in production anymore and thus only available through government-to-government Foreign Military Sales (FMS) deals based on the conversion of existing airframes.Boeing decided to refuse to submit a proposal for the Apache since their request for an eight-week extension to the last August deadline has not been heeded. The extension was needed to submit a proposal which meets all the requirements of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

The MoD spokesman said that a new tender will be announced soon since the air force aims to modernising the service by the middle of the next decade. However the IAF’s plans to begin with the deployment of the new attack helicopters by 2010 could now be delayed.Other tenders such as the $1.5 billion tender for 384 light utility helicopters are not affected by this cancelation. The attack helicopters are only one part of New Delhi’s overall plan to replace the military helicopter fleet for combat, reconnaissance and surveillance, and naval missions. The entire demand is estimated to be around 400 to 500 aircraft.

As it is often the case with the ups and downs of Indian defence procurement, the MoD’s announcement has left observers and analysts completely mystified and unable to formulate a logical explanation.For the Indian MoD to maintain that the three combat helicopters in the final shortlist do not meet their qualitative requirements would effectively imply that these requirements were either unrealistic, or rather tailored for a specific model that however did not made it to the shortlist.

Indeed, the only in-service helicopter-launched missile in the world that would offer a range of at least 7km with a fire-and-forget mode is the AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire that equips the AH-64D Longbow Apache. Thus, an educated guess would be that the Indian military was not very happy with the AH-64D having fallen out of the competition. The move to cancel the ongoing process and announce a renewed procurement effort in the near future is clearly intended to offer Boeing a second chance, and the outcome of any new

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