Indian Air Force inducts natively developed light combat helicopter ‘Prachanda’
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In an ironic twist of linguistic history, most US combat helicopters were given American "indian" names (Apache, Comanche, Black Hawk etc). I like such conventions. I wish that more nations adopted and stuck to them when introducing new equipment.
I genuinely never knew how necessary that was; if it was just something we'd ended up doing based on rumour and speculation, or if re-acronyming something from AMELIE to TOUGHGUY really did make it more likely to get the sale in Australia.
The US Navy has some well-understood conventions, including leading-class warships (one battleships, now nuclear submarines) named after states, aircraft carriers named after earlier warships (Enterprise, Wasp) or battles (Yorktown, Saratoga).
The US genocided the native Americans and then use their names on their death machines they use for killing other people.
>On June 10, 2012, Lakota elders ritually blessed two new South Dakota Army National Guard UH-72A Lakotas at a traditional ceremony on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Ceremonies like these happened often over the past several decades.
This is a story about a new helicopter, in India. But in the america's long ago "indian" was applied to indigenous groups by people looking for a route to India who didn't know where they were. And then, centuries later, the names for those groups were adopted as names for American helicopters. It is a long joke that I guess not everyone can appreciate.
I don't know your background and maybe you're from a first nation or tribe, but there isn't a common agreement between the populations of existing tribes and nations on what is offensive or incorrect. This isn't to say that any term is acceptable, but Indians, however incorrectly labeled by a colonizing group a few hundred years ago, is literally how some choose to identify themselves here in North America.
I say this as someone from India and event there, there isn't a common agreement or knowledge to arrive at an "inoffensive" term for folks who live here. Most just use the descriptor left by the British and say "Red Indians" with no malice implied.
this was interesting to watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ
Agni, Vayu, Brahmos, Prithvi, etc.
Nitpick: It is actually amalgamation of Indian & Russian rivers. Brahmaputra (India) and Moskva (Russia)
For now though, while western militaries can afford to hand out LAWS and MANPADS to their troops like sweets, India’s main rivals probably can’t. Yes an individual MANPAD is much cheaper than a chopper, but to defend your entire army from a few dozen choppers you’ll need to hand out a heck of a lot of MANPADS to get the coverage.
The main saving grace of a system like this is that the munitions, unguided rockets and cannon rounds, are pretty cheap. In contrast while drones are much cheaper than the chopper, they’re very expensive as munitions.
Based on the current war in Ukraine, this isn't true at all.
Even relatively expensive loitering munitions (compare to mortars dropped from DJI drones) like the Switchblade 600 cost in the range of $10,000-20,000 per deployment, significantly cheaper than the flight costs for a rotary light attack sortie and much cheaper than even the "low-cost" missile option for the Prachand (the Thales FZ275 LGR - the high-cost option is the MBDA Mistral, which costs $300,000 per deployment).
There is no scenario in which a manned rotary craft competes with a drone on cost.
What drone competes with a manned MH-74 on cost? It seems like the traditional drone advantages disappear when the payload is humans.
And to actually the thread, drones ARE being worked on that can go do search and rescue, bringing back the victim. Safer for crew, better coverage and can get into places a traditional rotor craft can't.
What you are comparing is capability, not cost, and by definition you cannot have an unmanned helicopter with pax.
To be honest, your reply is so disingenuous that I wonder if you're trolling?
Technically the space shuttle had limited autopilot capabilities so you could see it as a drone carrying humans, one of which happens to be a pilot who will control it at other times, but that's just a coincidence. And it was way expensive. You fool, you absolute fool.
And anyway, what is a fly-by-wire system, but a drone that is piloted remotely... for very small definitions of "remote."
I dunno. I don't think there's any productive discussion possible with people who are (for some reason) willing to ignore context and widen your claims so you can be wrong.
I feel like you may be in need of some introspection.
That’s to say switch blades don’t have comparable range obviously, and that’s not nothing.
If the helicopter can do something that no drone can, then it does compete regardless of the extra cost/complexity/manpower needed to deploy it.
No question helps are very expensive, but the vast majority of the costs are incurred whether you deploy it or not. They can range over hundreds of miles performing a wide variety of tasks and carry far more capable sensor, communications and weapon systems than drones.
As I said I think drones are here and very capable, and they’re the future for these sorts of missions, but we’re not quite there yet.
They can't. These are expensive in the West due to the privatized defense industry racking up prices. Russia and China can. And countries like India, who buy from them cheap, can.
It's always been the same, I think people are confused because for decades the US has been attacking AK47 wielding farmers with $$$ cutting edge technology but wars between relatively equivalent forces is always a blood bath, everything you can come up with has a cheaper counter measure
> The impetus for the development of the LCH Prachand came in the form of the Kargil War, a conflict fought between India and neighbouring Pakistan in 1999, which revealed the Indian armed forces lacked a suitable armed rotorcraft capable of operating unrestricted in the high-altitude theatre.
In that conflict, Pakistan downed more than one Indian MiG with a man-pad, so I presume this scenario is not lost on India w.r.t. development of this aircraft.
Russia has lost that many helicopters in about 9 months in Ukraine, id say the effectiveness of helicopters is largely dependent on the capabilities of your opponent and whether or not you can gain air superiority.
I certainly wouldn't base any opinion on the effectiveness of helicopters in general on Russian performance in the current war.
How about the side that can out produce and outspend (or has friends that do) will come out on top. Same lesson from ww2 . The tricky bit it to stay standing till then
I dunno, maybe we need to get, like, France and the UK to duke it out again? (kidding obviously).
Sure but (and I could be wrong here) isn't this the first time that modern Russia helicopters has gone up against modern MANPADS in a near peer type of conflict?.
Id say it shows at least the effectiveness of different MANPADS against specific countermeasures no?.
Their use of tanks is a great example. Russian losses are huge, mostly because they aren’t coordinating with infantry and artillery fires.
If you want to be very safe you can sit static encased in a metre thick steel shell, but you won’t achieve anything.
End of the Helicopter? (no) - MANPADS and helicopter losses in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoKpXvj41A
The TL;DR is "It's complicated".
Just keep the corruption out of the process and let the multiplier do its work.
Look at origin. Very few equipment come from the USA.
TIL there is move in California to have UoC source it's cafeteria meals direct from California farmers (shortening the supply chain, increasing profits and consistent income for farmers)
I know that has a lot of issues but I think it is a very appealing move. Maybe farmers co-ops next?
1. Governments spending tax dollars should make efforts to keep the multiplier in their economy. For something like a hi-tech helicopter there will be a supply chain hundreds of firms long, many small and looking to grow and provide jobs.
2. India has an advantage (certainly compared to US purchases, maybe less to Soviet via China) in labour costs - building a helicopter to the "same" spec in India just costs less than in Ohio, and that means more copter for your rupee
3. Pretty much every government in wartime finds out its supply chains are borked - there is always a shell crisis. It's one reason the US armed forces are so effective - they have been in live wars for thirty years. No chance for a torpedo to be developed that simply does not explode.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Prachand
Sounds like some French technology at its core.
If my understanding of history is correct the Indian military was one of the biggest historical customers of the Alouette helicopter, so this is continuing a long historical track record of India buying this tech from France.
In the mountain states there were several bad crashes and enough of them involved Jet Rangers that it acquired the nickname "Death Ranger" on a couple crews I was with. Probably not the helicopter's fault since it has a great reputation everywhere else. Bad things happen when you ignore safety training and maintenance. Those seismic crews were full of dopeheads.
For lifting in the mountains you almost always saw the French Aerospatiale Lama. It was a great helicopter and when equipped with a long enough line could move your drills and assorted equipment anywhere on the slope.
Most pilots back then were Vietnam veterans. You always knew you were in good hands with one of those guys flying. I imagine most are retired by now. One in my area rebuilds helicopters for military museums and other clients. I see him fairly often on low level flights checking everything out on his latest rebuild.
I've loved helicopters since I was a kid growing up near Ft Hood during the Vietnam War. The skies were always filled with helicopters. To this day when I'm inside and hear a chopper I feel the urge to run outside a see which one it is. I am apparently too old now to reasonably expect to be able to grow out of it. They all have distinctive approach and departure sound profiles. The strangest helicopter I have seen was a full-size robotic chopper (large enough for pilot and co-pilot but it had no cockpit windshield at all) that was flying along near my house one day less than a hundred feet off the ground. I looked for any documentation online about it but only found one military chopper that looked like it and no mention of civilian use.
Attack Helicopters Fleet Strength by Country -- https://www.globalfirepower.com/aircraft-helicopters-attack....
Helicopter manufacturer countries -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_manufacturer
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/03/list-of-aircraft-losse...
The real number is probably somewhere between the two, but in any case a massive chunk of the Russian Air Force is destroyed/inoperable.
That being said, 2 more ded Russian copters in the past 24 hours. Hurrah.
See Turkish drone use in UA/RU war. For a single helicopter, you could blanket the skies with drones. Now they aren't dirt cheap, $5 million, but that's a hellva lot cheaper than a single heli.
And here I thought the chinook was big, this thing is the tow truck you call when you get your chinook stuck in the mud.
[1] wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26
Tanks and aircraft have become extremely vulnerable due to smart munitions with shaped charge warheads and anti-aircraft missiles (both SAM and MANPADS). This means that breaking through enemy lines becomes all but impossible or only at enormous human cost.
It wouldn't surprise me if chemical warfare is once again used to break the stalemate. Other options are autonomous killing machines and drone swarms (which we're already seeing to some extent).
More likely Russia is trying to obtain spare parts to keep their existing weapons operating. They're working hard to source those through neutral countries, either purchasing locally manufactured products or employing straw buyers to purchase from Western manufacturers.
https://www.politico.eu/article/indias-stance-on-the-ukraine...
Physician, heal thyself. First let the EU stop buying Russian oil and gas, and then they can preach to others.
"Despite U.S.-led efforts to isolate Russia’s economy and hasten the war’s end, India has chosen to increase imports of Russian oil ten-fold, while increasing that of fertilizer eight-fold. Together with China, Indian purchases of Russian goods have largely negated the effect of transatlantic energy sanctions, and India further funds Russia’s war machine by purchasing big-ticket items, such as submarines, tanks, fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missile systems — a full half of the country’s arms imports come from Russia."
This is completely different from what is happening in the EU, which reduced by a lot the imports from Russia of gas, oil and other goods. My gas/electricity bills more than doubled because of it, still I'm all for cutting any support of Putin, but there's a line between that and economic suicide that at the moment can't be crossed. Ideally, we'll get there in some time; India doesn't even show they aim at that in the long run. Also, I used the word "silently" which makes a world of difference.
Moreover, if you're from India and take my post as a personal attack on your nation or nationality, you are way off track.
India has clearly stated it will buy cheap oil where ever it's available on the market, there is nothing special about russia, look up the actual quantities of oil and LNG imports from russia to india vs india's other suppliers.
What made india load up on russian oil is the incredibly short-sighted and ineffective sanctions on russian oil from the west that only made russian oil available at a discount.
EU didn't stop buying russian gas, russia and the nord stream pipeline saboteurs didn't give them a choice. And if you want to talk about war profiteering look to the profits of american oil and LNG companies that are replacing EU's supplies and rift it's causing between EU and USA.
Energy is the lifeblood of any human society/economy, A country of 1.4 billion with a per capita GDP that india has cannot afford to take a hypocritical moral Highground when doing so in an environment with rising energy prices means people starve.
Not trying to defend India here, I don't think there is anything to defend. I don't think people truly comprehend how deeply rooted agenda driven narratives are in western media. I mean it's not unique to western media but the diversity of narratives in the west unlike the sanctioned narrative in china gives people in the west this false illusion that the lens their media is seeing the world through must be accurate(it isn't).
Another agenda driven narrative recently being put forward is Saudi Arabia siding with russia over the US. Why? because OPEC didn't follow US's lead on market manipulation (price caps, crude supply) and dared to think and act independently.
"India has chosen to increase imports of Russian oil ten-fold,..."
These numbers mean nothing if we don't know the absolute numbers. So, for example, if India was buying <0.1% of oil from Russia earlier, it would now by buying < 1%...
In any case: India has slowed down purchases from Russia now: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Why-India-Is-Suddenly-...
They have always maintained that they have a large population to support, and will go for the cheapest option out there.
BTW: there is nothing stopping countries like Germany and USA from opening their checkbooks and subsidizing Indian oil purchases to help them buy more Saudi or African oil. Nothing. Don't expect a country with 1/10 the GDP of the US to harm its economy to fight someone else's war.
Demand for oil is relatively inelastic -- e.g. estimates are something like -.05 in the short term and -.03 in the long term. So just disappearing Russian oil from the market would result in a ~220% increase in oil prices (a very rough estimate, but a ballpark) -- oil would cost roughly $200. That would destroy the world economy and cause mass starvation as well.
So what happens is that an embargo is created and the supply drops, and prices go up, by, say, $20, and then Russia comes along and says "We'll give you a $15 discount if you buy our oil". Then there are lots of buyers, of which India is only one, that agree to this. The end result is that Russia makes $5 more per barrel than before the embargo, but they sell a bit less oil. Everyone else pays a bit more. As this happens, word gets out that Russia is selling oil for $15 below market and the world price falls. As the price falls, the discount narrows. Presently, the discount is $5 (and it's still falling).
In the same way, the US and Europe continue to buy Russian oil, often laundered through third parties. But they all pretend that they have moved off of Russian oil, even though everyone knows it's just gone through some shell companies.
There are now attempts to set a price cap on Russian oil by the G7 nations -- Russia sells about 3 mbd to G7 nations now. But again, this same process will happen. Russia will say "no, I won't sell to you at this low price", at which point the G7 nations have to get their oil from somewhere else, and they outbid existing buyers so the price goes up, then Russia offers a discount that's a little bit lower than the price increase, and prices fall down a bit, but not all the way to what they were before. Russia makes more money per barrel, but sells a bit less. Everyone else pays more per barrel.
Many don't remember the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, but basically OPEC announced it was refusing to sell oil to Western powers in order to punish them for supporting Israel in the 1973 war. At that time, people understood that not being able to buy OPEC oil would cause them to suffer, but that knowledge appears to have been lost, and now we are imposing self-embargoes of oil against the No 2 supplier. But the world is a lot bigger now, with most of Russia's oil being sold to Asia, and Asia still understands the basic supply-demand relationships that the West appears to have forgotten. You can't expect the world to voluntarily agree to $200 oil. They will continue to buy from the lowest bidder, even if the G7 nations self-impose a higher price for their own purchases.
All these attempts to prevent two nations from trading in commodities -- e.g. banning the insurance of Russian oil in London -- don't actually work, as both China and Russia now offer insurance on Russian oil and also maintain their own fleet of tankers and there is a vast network of pipelines running across central asia. The result will again be that the market share of London insurers will fall as ships are insured elsewhere. The economic share of shipping in Europe will fall as other nations' fleets are used, etc. Oil is just too important to the functioning of the global economy for nations to agree to a doubling of its price.
See the videos of Indian Minister of External Affairs, S.Jaishankar on Youtube for edification.
India has a long track record of being a non-aligned power. If anything india has been moving closer and closer to the west since the 90s. I think this misinterpretation of india being against the west by some in the west is because they expect their allies to be cronies who'll toe the line.
I agree with you and as does anybody with even a passing familiarity with international diplomacy, foreign policy by its very nature is about engaging with other countries to further a nation's self interests.
The problem is western democracies need to create a narrative of being the white knights of the world in order to justify use of force, coercion or influence to their people no matter how hypocritical that narrative might be considering their own actions in the past. This absolute narrative by extension also means anyone who isn't falling in line with the party line is painted as being on the "wrong side of history".
India is neither aligned with the west nor russia because of a single policy issue like china, and india does not see the world as a bipolar place like west vs russia, west vs china, whoever vs whoever...
India always engages and will always engage with nations where mutual interests are aligned, help where it can, and be assertive where it needs to be.
India is already aligned with the west in containing china amid other common objectives in the indian ocean through QUAD.
Also china isn't that big of a bugbear for india as some outside india think it is. China is the dominant strategic regional threat but is by no means even remotely close to an existential one.
The Indian people and government are furious with china's flouting of the agreed upon status quo at the border and it comes with all the nationalistic fervour that fury entails. It has also eroded india's trust in china at a diplomatic and military level.
India has been trying to counter and contain china's influence in the region with limited success and all of India's politcal, diplomatic and military institutions see china as our biggest threat.
The nuance in the "bugbear" thing is that this accelerated re-orientation against china is not coming from a place of fear, it's coming from a place of "Come at me bro".
While on paper it might seem like India is militarily outmatched by china the geopolitical and tactical reality is that china is incapable of mounting a meaningfully successful attack against India without itself suffering politically, militarily, economically and diplomatically.
I'm not a fan of the Indian government's tendency to behave like a nanny state over the past decade by arbitrary filtering/banning content on the internet. I'm not a fan of a lot of things that the Indian government does or how it goes about doing them.
As far as tiktok, there are plenty of reasons to ban it and there are plenty of reasons not to, though it seemed more reactionary than well thought out.
I don't think nuanced decision making is a strong suite of Indian government when it comes to technology especially censorship(VLC was blocked for god's sake) in direct contrast to how well it seems to be executing the India stack at scale.
This binary choice of aligning and then trapping oneself into being subservient to one sides is exactly what India is trying to avoid.
Ukraine may be fending off Russians with help of the west and may even push Russia all the way back, but their families, cultural & human capital, infrastructure are all being eroded, significantly. Future generations of Ukraine will have to pay this debt.
India voluntarily making a choice which would bring it in the cross-hairs of China or the West would be a catastrophic failure of imagination.
In a sense, Yes; because of its unique History and Geography.
There is no other place on Earth with the same degree of diversity in various aspects like Religion, Philosophies, Social structure, Cultural diversity, Languages, Food, Ethnic groups, Economic strata, Education etc. which exists as a single Nation, thriving and moving forward.
The rest of the World and in particular; "The West" can learn a lot from India on how to live together in spite of differences.
Simple minds should start here:
* From Nation-State to State-Nation - https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/12/18/from-nation-state-t...
* Followup at India is not a nation-state, or a state-nation. It is a civilisational-state - https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/india-is-not-a-nation...
There is no 'anti-west' foreign policy. India follows neutrality in most geo-political nonsense due to its non-alignment philosophy. It has followed it for the past 75 years and will continue to follow it.
Why should the smartest Indians live in India and not move to developed countries?
Obviously there should be a better reason than that. But hard leaning nationalists tend to lack better ideas.
The level of pride in being American that Democrats have by and large is still a kind of nationalism, albeit surely a more nuanced and conscientious one than the ones Republicans have (again by and large). Can't comment on which side is actually better for the country (that's politics), but my point is that Democrats (and allied liberals) are hypocritical in the sense that their pride is supposedly healthy patriotism while another's pride is 'nationalism'.
Ultimataly both Democrats and Republicans are sustained by extensive sales pitches of what America (TM) is all about. Democrats seem to think their politics represents the One Final Political Solution to End Misery Everywhere, but it is still based on aforementioned sales pitches all around ("We're on the Good side!").
What India does need to do is to define its own response to the question of how society views LGBTQ. In some cases, in some sections of traditional society, it has developed an answer that is inclusive and friendly. In some other cases it is simply copying from the West, which is what the mainstream discourse is also heading towards. The latter imo is not authentic and will fail India in the long run.
I don't care whether something is culturally "authentic" or not. I care about whether people can live the life they want to live or not.
What I'm trying to say is that there need not be just one way to deliver on this value -- there can be more than one valid approach to making LGBT folks have freedom & respect.
India has historically been pluralistic and a one-size-fits-all approach would actually be an unwelcome deviation. With regards to women, for example, even one of Manu's commentators (Medhatithi iirc) states that women used to follow one of two lifestyles: (1) being the traditional housewife, patriarchy & all or (2) having a career (academic) and being independent, implying that those 2 options were not available at the time the commentator lived. Indians today do have the freedom to look back at this past and rework & innovate -- rather than simply saying the West is the best.
Speech by Indian External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar on this very topic : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUtbsPOE944