Maoist whirr in chopper race

New Delhi: The counter-Naxalite drive often called Operation Green Hunt has resulted in a huge demand for helicopters that two global majors are vying to capture for the millions of dollars on offer.
The market for choppers has suddenly expanded with state and central police forces asking for more rotary-wing aircraft. There is a spurt in the demand because the Indian Air Force has told the Union home ministry it does not have enough to spare.
The Indian Air Force and the Indian Army are also in the middle of trials to buy hundreds of military helicopters. But global chopper-makers, Bell Textron and Eurocopter, are more enthused by the demand from the police forces because of the tardy process of military procurement.
Bell Textron is best known for the the UH-1 “Huey” – a legendary flying-machine that the US used in the war against the communist guerrillas (role models for the Naxalites) in Vietnam in the early 1970s – and was quicker off the blocks having sold its first helicopter in India nearly 53 years ago.
It has now sold more than 100 of different types of helicopters from its stable, increasingly to private and public sector companies. In 2009 alone, the company sold 22.
This week Eurocopter, part of the European aviation firm EADS, announced that it was setting up an Indian subsidiary. The company estimates that the Indian market will be worth nearly $ 140 million dollars in five years.
24/10/10 Sujan Dutta/The Telegraph

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Categories: Foreign Oct 2010, Indian Aviation- In General Oct 2010, New Oct 2010