New Delhi:
The Indian Air Force and state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited have finally rectified the pricing issue of 83 Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)-Mk1A. The breakthrough in the pricing issue of Tejas was announced by Apurva Chandra, Director General (Acquisition) in the Defence Ministry on Thursday. He said that the ministry had also cleared the Procurement of additional Akash surface-to-air missiles (SAM) for the Indian Air Force (IAF), costing Rs. 5500 crore, reported The Hindu.
“Pricing of the LCA, which was under discussion with the costing committee, has been finalised two days back in a meeting with the Secretary of Defence Production. Now, discussion for the support package is on. That also should be finalised in a month or two. So we should be in a position to sign the contract for the aircraft in the next 3-4 months”, he added.
(An earlier version of this story inadvertently carried a photo clicked by Angad Singh. News Nation is a thorough professional organisation and understands the effort one makes to click such wonderful images. The error is regretted.)
The Defence Acquisition Council had given its consent for the procurement of 83 LCA-Mk1A aircraft in November 2016 itself while the Indian Air Force issued the Request For Proposal (RFP) in December 2017.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence is currently reviewing Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) and the Defence Procurement Manual (DPM) 2009. A 11-member committee has been appointed by the Ministry of Defence to revise both DPP and DPM. The committee is required to give its recommendation within six months.
Moreover, the indigenously designed Light Utility Helicopter successfully completed the high altitude capability in hot and high weather conditions in Himalayas, HAL announced on Thursday. Trials were carried out by the test pilots from HAL, Indian Air Force and Army from Aug 24 to Sept 2.
The helicopter embarked on a 3000 km flight from Bengaluru to Leh over a period of three days traversing many civil and military airfields.The LUH has completed hot weather trials at Nagpur in 2018, cold weather trials at Leh in Jammu and Kashmir 2019 and sea level trials at Chennai in 2018 and at Puducherry in 2019, HAL said.
