UP: A Cheetah helicopter belonging to an Army Aviation unit in Bareilly crashed shortly after it took off on Wednesday morning killing all the three officers on board. The helicopter crashed about a kilometre from Bareilly at about 7.45 am and sources said that it was on a “maintenance sortie”. The Ministry of Defence has withheld the names of the officers as the Next of Kin ( NoK) of the deceased will be informed through official channels before disclosing their names- sources said.
Of the three officers, two captains and one major- including the pilot and one officer belonging to maintenance branch of the Army Aviation Corps. “It is too early to arrive at determining the cause of the crash. An inquiry will determine the cause of the mishap,” said an Army official.
The Cheetah- Alouette II is a light helicopter originally manufactured by Sud Aviation and later Aérospatiale, both of France. The Cheetah has been extensively used in the Himalayas, where it is operating at altitudes beyond 20,000 ft and in Siachen it is the backbone of Indian Army’s strategic military presence. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) continues limited licence production as the SA-315B Cheetah.
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The Army has long been pressing for the need to replace these 60s vintage chopper. In fact in 2007, in the Rajya Sabha, then defence minister A K Antony had said that the “Government proposes to withdraw Chetak and Cheetah helicopters from the Army, because the existing fleet of helicopters is of 1960s and 1970s vintage and hence, inadequate for the present operational requirement of the Indian Army”.
The aircraft still continue to be in service. In the most recent development, the procurement of the 197 Light Utility Helicopters ( LUH)- which are to replace the ageing Cheetah/ Chetak helicopters of the Army- was scrapped by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) on August 29.
