Army grounds Dhruv ALH fleet again following Kishtwar crash
An Indian Army Dhruv advanced light helicopter crash landed in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar district on Thursday
The Indian Army has grounded its fleet of the indigenous Dhruv advanced light helicopter (ALH) for a comprehensive safety check after a helicopter crash-landed two days ago, killing a soldier and injuring the two pilots, an official familiar with the matter said on Saturday.
The helicopter crash landed in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar district on Thursday after the pilots reported a technical fault to the air traffic control. This is for the second time in less than two months that the army has grounded the ALH fleet.
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The three services grounded their entire fleets of the ALH in March for safety checks after an Indian Navy ALH ditched into the Arabian Sea on March 8 following unexplained loss of power. Ditching is a hazardous manoeuvre and refers to an aircraft making an emergency landing in water after the loss of control.
The navy choppers are still grounded, while the Indian Air Force (IAF) is clearing its ALHs for flying in batches after the mandatory checks, said another official. The three services operate around 300 variants of the ALH, with the army accounting for the most - 96 ALHs and 75 armed versions called Rudra.
The armed forces grounded their ALH fleets last year too after an army Rudra helicopter crashed in Arunachal Pradesh in October 2022, killing all five personnel on board. To be sure, it is not uncommon for an aircraft fleet to be grounded for inspection after an unexplained crash or incident.
Temporary grounding of a fleet in such cases is absolutely in order and is essentially a precautionary move to ensure there is no recurrence, military aviation expert and former IAF vice chief Air Marshal KK Nohwar (retd) said after the March incident.
Specialist teams of state-run aircraft maker Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), which has designed and produced the helicopters, are involved in the ongoing safety checks, said officials.
The helicopters have been riddled with problems including control rod failure (affecting power input to rotor blades) and hydraulics issues, the officials said. The Dhruv ALH is a twin-engine, multi-mission helicopter in the 5.5-tonne class. ALH operations have been hit in the past too - the helicopters were grounded in 2006 following tail rotor problems, and later again in 2014 after a fatal crash.
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The July 2014 crash, which left the chopper’s seven-man crew dead near Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh, was one of the worst crashes involving the helicopter. It had logged only two hours of flying after being serviced at Bareilly.
In another incident, former Northern Army commander Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh and eight others were injured after an ALH crashed in the Poonch sector in October 2019.
The grounding of the ALH comes at a time when HAL is looking at tapping the export potential of the chopper. It is currently in talks with the Philippines for a possible order. In 2015, Ecuador unilaterally terminated a contract with HAL after four of the seven ALHs it had bought from the Indian firm were involved in crashes.