NEWS
Details of a disturbing spat between the IAF and HAL has appeared in a new public document. This possibly for the first time sheds light on the true quality of the relationship that the two share. A new report by India’s national audit watchdog, the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) has thrown fresh and damning light on how HAL dealt with a flight control phenomenon that has given its chopper division real nightmares over the last few years—cyclic saturation. The phenomenon caused two crashes of the Dhruv in the last three years. The report reveals that it was this “limitation of control saturation” that caused Chile to pull out of a near final contract in July 2007.

VIEWS
Advanced light helicopter Dhruv, the pride of the Indian aerospace major HAL and the nation, has in the wake of the report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India available in the public domain, hit the headlines once again. The report castigates HAL for inadequate response to the problem of design deficiency/limitation described as “control saturation” even after it was identified as the reason for a fatal accident in 2007.

The report alludes HAL of “safeguarding its business interests even at the cost of a professional approach to address a problem that has serious flight safety and operational implications.” Is there also severe indictment for a plethora of inadequacies afflicting the Dhruv programme as listed in the report? These include technical issues such as inordinately high empty weight impinging on payload capability, premature engine withdrawals and problems related to tail rotor blade. The report highlights the lack of progress in a number of areas such as delay in the development of the “armed” version, inability to obtain international safety certifications impeding the company’s efforts to penetrate the international market, inadequate level of indigenisation even after a decade of the programme, and despite civil certification, its failure to successfully execute orders received for the civil version from the domestic market.

Among the other deficiencies, the report has observed failure on the part of the company to complete the required technical documentation, slippage in delivery schedules and inordinately large number of modifications, reported to be 363, to the 74 machines delivered to the armed forces as the design is yet to be frozen. The report attributes the tardy pace in the progress of the project that is lagging behind by three years to high degree of tolerance in the delivery of machines laden with concessions, exhibited by the captive customers, namely the armed forces.