New Delhi: One set of individuals who will certainly not be applauding the upcoming April 2 diamond jubilee salutations commemorating the commissioning of Chetak light utility helicopters into the Indian Air Force in 1962 will be the Army Wives Agitation Group.
Indian Air Force is celebrating the diamond jubilee salutations of commissioning of Chetak light utility helicopters on 2nd April.
Whereas, ‘Army Wives Agitation Group’ has appealed to Prime Minister to end the unrelenting stress, trauma and tragedy which these helicopters are continuing to generate for numerous Army Aviation Corps (AAC) and IAF families and retire them at the soonest.
The group founder Meenal Wagh Bhosale said, “There is no reason whatsoever to celebrate the continuance in operational service of ‘flying coffins’ like the Chetak helicopters.” They are now ‘hopelessly obsolete’. She contended that they have turned into ‘widow makers’ and ‘death traps’. She claimed that some 42 of both these helicopter types had crashed between 2001 and 2014, killing around 80 young AAC officers and leaving behind equally youthful widows, and in some instances, posthumously born children.
In 2015, the group met with the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and petitioned him to retire the two long-outdated light utility helicopters which incorporated technology from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The group informed him that 191 of these helicopters had crashed, killing 294 pilots over the last three decades.
In India Strategic Magzine 2016, Former AAC Head Lieutenant General B.S. Pawar declared that “The existing Cheetah and Chetak helicopters are difficult to service and maintain, with the spares situation becoming critical.” Maintenance of the Chetak and Cheetah fleet is becoming a nightmare as HAL is finding it increasingly difficult to keep it serviceable and safely airborne,” following which the situation had only deteriorated further. Web Desk
