New Delhi:
There have been 16 accidents involving the indigenously built Dhruv
Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) ever since the Hindustan Aeronautics
Limited began producing them in 2002, the government informed Parliament
on Tuesday.
Of the accidents, two of them are civilian variants. Eleven accidents occurred in India and five abroad.
“Out of 16 accidents, 12 occurred due to
human error and environmental factors and the remaining four occurred
due to technical reasons,” Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit
Singh said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.
Dhruv has been indigenously designed and
developed by the HAL and is powered by a Shakti engine jointly
developed by the HAL and Turbomeca of France.
Ecuador had procured seven ALH Dhruvs
from India, five in 2009 and two in 2011 in a deal worth $ 45.2 million,
of which four had crashed following which the remaining had been
grounded. Late last year, the Government of Ecuador had unilaterally
terminated the contract with HAL.
On this, the government said that as per
the notice issued by the Ecuador government, ‘non-compliance of the
seller of some of the obligations contracted by virtue of the present
contract’ and ‘value of the fines exceeding the amount of guarantee of
faithful compliance of the contract’ had been cited as the reasons.
While two of the crashes have been
attributed to pilot error, one was due to a mechanical failure while
that of the fourth is still being debated.
On this, Mr. Singh said: “After the
enquiry, based on the specific nature of the recommendations, the
required improvements/corrective measures are implemented by the
operator, HAL and other Original Equipment Manufacturers [OEM] as
applicable.”
In addition to Ecuador, two ALHs had
been exported to the Maldives and one each to Nepal and Mauritius. The
series of crashes have come as an embarrassment in the backdrop of the
government’s ambitious plan to turn India into a major exporter of
military hardware.
The Hindu
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