Boeing to offer Apahce and Chinook to India

U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co plans to bid for two defence projects in India worth $2 billion in the next few months, the company's country head said on Wednesday. Boeing is looking to supply India with 22 attack helicopters and at least a dozen heavy-lift choppers to replace its ageing Soviet-era fleet. "We are very keen to offer our Apache AH-64 helicopters to India and we have already responded to their request for information on our product," Vivek Lall, India country head of Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems (IDS).

India asked seven international companies last June to submit bids for supplying the attack helicopters, but the government cancelled the tender last month saying bidders did not meet its requirements and said a fresh tender would be issued soon. Senior defence officials said the new tender for the two deals was likely to come after the April/May general election. "We will be very happy to bid after scrutinising the details," Lall told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Boeing also plans to bid for a separate $1 billion deal to supply at least a dozen heavy-lift helicopters to the Indian Air Force, with Lall saying the U.S. plane maker was interested in offering its Chinook CH-47. India is looking to spend more than $30 billion over the next five years to modernise its largely Soviet-era weapons systems and is also launching its first military spy satellite next year.

Boeing, which has already sealed a $2.1 billion deal to sell India 8 maritime patrol aircraft, is gearing up for trials to supply 126 fighter jets in one of the world's biggest arms deals, worth more than $10 billion. Two U.S. companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp, are vying with Russia's MiG-35, France's Dassault Rafale, Sweden's Saab KAS-39 Gripen and the Eurofighter Typhoon, a consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish companies, for the fighter deal.

Posted in: Helicopter