New Delhi: The Indian Navy has finally selected the US Sikorsky S-70B Seahawk for its shipboard multi-role helicopter (MRH) requirement. Sixteen helicopters will initially be bought for $1 billion.
Sikorsky's tender was opened December 4 on the Navy Day, soon after the navy chief, Admiral Robin Dhowan, said that the government was fast-tracking various programmes for the modernization of the armed forces, and that some of the naval projects would be cleared "very soon."
Indeed so, the opening of the commercial bid at the ministry of defence (MoD), where the files have been held up for one reason or another for three years, was a Navy Day gift to the force.
Admiral Dhowan, who hosted a big Navy Day reception, did not say anything on the ceremonial occasion but was visibly in smiles and high spirits. Only a day before, on December 3, he had told this writer that it was "comforting" to the navy brass to know that long-pending requirements were now being procedurally cleared on fast-track.
05/12/14 ZeeNews
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Sikorsky's tender was opened December 4 on the Navy Day, soon after the navy chief, Admiral Robin Dhowan, said that the government was fast-tracking various programmes for the modernization of the armed forces, and that some of the naval projects would be cleared "very soon."
Indeed so, the opening of the commercial bid at the ministry of defence (MoD), where the files have been held up for one reason or another for three years, was a Navy Day gift to the force.
Admiral Dhowan, who hosted a big Navy Day reception, did not say anything on the ceremonial occasion but was visibly in smiles and high spirits. Only a day before, on December 3, he had told this writer that it was "comforting" to the navy brass to know that long-pending requirements were now being procedurally cleared on fast-track.
05/12/14 ZeeNews
