Just 15 of the 24 contracted Romeos are operational, leaving the Navy far below its requirement for 123 multi-role helicopters.
NEW DELHI: With China stepping up its underwater forays into the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and Pakistan readying its new Chinese-origin Hangor-class boats equipped with air-independent propulsion (AIP), India has so far taken delivery of 21 of the 24 MH-60R ‘Romeo’ multi-role helicopters contracted from the US for hunting enemy submarines.
The delayed deliveries come amid a continuing huge shortfall in anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and multi-role choppers for the Navy’s frontline warships, with the overall requirement pegged at well over 100.
Sources said that the Navy, in the interim, is also mulling a repeat order of the US-origin Romeos to partially bridge the gap.
Of the 21 Romeos delivered, 15 are operational with the Navy. Three are being used for training Indian aircrews in the US, while another three are undergoing India-specific modifications and certification before deployment. The ones already in service, in turn, will be progressively rotated to the US in batches for the same upgrades, sources said.
“The modifications in the pipeline are in no way linked to any technical glitches or operational shortcomings. They include the progressive integration of indigenous electronic warfare (EW) suite, secure communication systems and weapons on the platform,” a source said.
The crunch is not the Navy’s alone, with the Indian military’s overall helicopter fleet ageing and inadequate and the requirement over the next decade estimated at more than 1,000 choppers.
The Navy has so far raised two Romeo squadrons, INAS 334 commissioned at Kochi in March 2024 and INAS 335 at Goa in December last year.
The Rs 15,157 crore deal for the 24 Lockheed Martin-Sikorsky helicopters, inked through the US foreign military sales (FMS) route in Feb 2020, had stipulated delivery of all of them by last year. But the programme has slipped, with three still pending.
The twin-engine Romeos, packed with multi-mode radars, low-frequency dipping sonars, air-dropped sonobuoys and electro-optical turrets, can detect and track threats both below and above the surface. For the kill, they are armed with Mk-54 lightweight torpedoes and Hellfire missiles.
They are a generational jump over the Navy’s ageing fleet of around twenty Sea Kings, the 42Bs for sub-hunting and anti-surface warfare and the 42Cs for troop transport, as well as the Kamov-28s, which also serve in the ASW role. Though both fleets have received upgrades over the years, the choppers are several decades old and increasingly dogged by maintenance and serviceability problems.
But even all 24 Romeos will meet only a fraction of the Navy’s long-pending requirement for 123 naval multi-role helicopters (NMRH). The first RFI (Request for Information) for the 123 NMRHs was issued way back in 2011 to equip warships commissioned from 1997 onwards. It was scrapped and a fresh one floated in 2017 under the strategic partnership model. Nearly a decade later, the programme remains without a contract.
A part of the gap is also expected to be plugged by HAL’s deck-based multi-role helicopter, the naval variant of the IMRH project, which is separate from the RFI. But with the chopper still in the design and development stage, the shortfall will persist for years.
Meanwhile, China’s navy, the world’s largest, now has over 60 submarines, including nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) capable of extended deployments far from home waters. Chinese boats regularly prowl the IOR, often accompanied by survey and ‘research’ vessels suspected of espionage and intelligence-gathering.
India, in contrast, does not operate a single SSN at present. The Akula-class SSN being leased from Russia, Chakra-III, is now slated for induction only in 2028, three years behind schedule. The government has also approved construction of two indigenous SSNs under Project-77, the first step towards a planned fleet of at least six such boats.
On the western front, Pakistan is inducting eight Hangor-class diesel-electric submarines from China, fitted with Stirling-engine based AIP that allows boats to stay submerged for much longer. The first Chinese-built Hangor is already on its way to Karachi, with Chinese technicians and crew aboard for induction and training.
None of India’s conventional submarines, in turn, has an operational AIP system as yet. DRDO’s indigenous fuel cell-based AIP is expected to be ready for first integration later this year, with INS Khanderi slated to become the first Kalvari-class boat to undergo the retrofit and rejoin operational service by end-2028.
