India’s New AW101 VVIP Merlin Lift Off

Some bad publicity recently, but here’s the first of India’s 12 AgustaWestland AW101 Merlin VVIP executive transport choppers! These photos are from the Fightercontrol forum. If I’m overlooking a permission/credit, please let me know.

26 thoughts on “India’s New AW101 VVIP Merlin Lift Off”

  1. Soldiers in dire need for upgraded & more capable helos for Siachin have to wait for years to get them. But for politicians, super expensive and frankly, un-necessarily big helos like this one are bought on fast track.
    Shouldn't the leaders proudly fly in their home made Dhruv?

  2. When comes to pick for Politician's Secure Flight ,MOD's choice/pick has been top class.(AW-101 with latest Corrosion proof Body/Fuselage with all kind of warning sensors like Radar Warning,Laser Warning,Infrared Warning and Integrated Active Air Defense systems…no media cry about picking no so proven workhorse etc.) no compromise and when comes to pick for our soldires in Armed Forces..not seen any pick with futuristic fuselage or sensors…and there will be silent campaign to pick old legacy system while saying the proven workhorse are picked up..just for political/monetary benefits..

    Soo sad 🙁

  3. Shiv,AW 101 Is also in fray for Indian navy 75 x 12 tonne NMRH requirement to replace seaking's mk42 along sikorsky MH 92 Super hawk ?
    also,post some stuff on other two tenders of Navy,56 x LUH and 16 x MRH [S-70 Seahawk is front runner]

    navy might go with AW-101 for tender of 75 choppers

  4. Bullshit!!! Copycats. What's wrong with Dhruv? I've never seen such a fast induction. Only 3 years. Compare that to induction of weapons systems for our armed forces, no less than 10 years.

  5. Sir.
    Please inform the latest status of development of LCH.
    What are the modifications carried out in the ALH. How many ALH were produced last financial year.
    When can we expect MCH to fly.

  6. BANGALORE: An employee of a DRDO division and a journalist were among 11 men, all in their twenties, arrested by Karnataka police for alleged links with global terror outfits. A day after an operation to nab these men ended on Wednesday, police said they had been told the group had plans to assassinate MPs and MLAs from the state, a businessman and two journalists from Bangalore.

    Six of them were picked up from Bangalore on Wednesday morning, hours after the others were arrested in Hubli. Police said all had links with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihadal-Islami. Ejaz Mohammed Mirza, one of the men arrested, works for Airborne Early Warning and Control System, a DRDO division, sources in central intelligence and state home ministry said. An imported 7.65 mm revolver, seven bullets, computers, hard disks, mobile phones and religious tracts were recovered from the men, state police chief Lalrokhuma Pachau told reporters on Thursday.

    Those arrested in Bangalore are Muthi-ur-Rahman Siddiqui, 26; Shoaib Ahmed Mirza alias Chhotu, 25; Abdullah alias Abdul Hakim Jamadar, 25; Ejaz Mohammed Mirza, 25; Mohammed Yusuf Nalbandh, 28; and Riyaz Ahmed Byahatti, 28.

    i think MP's and MLA's will be safe with this HELLCORREPTER

  7. Let's not take cheap shots against politicians. There are plenty of genuine issues to attack them for: getting secure VIP transport is not one of them. Or would you prefer the LeT to shoot our PM out of the sky?

    If you haven't noticed the MoD has stepped up arms procurement and our jawans are much better equipped now than they were a few years ago.

  8. Hi Shiv,

    You are supposed to be a live blog on military affairs.

    By keeping quite on recent Supreme Court judgements you have kept quite like MoD agency !!

  9. Most conquers do plunder and slaughter.

    But they are also humans and they reason every action they commit. From their point of view it is right.

    We have the right to choose the best point of view.

    See eventhough Britishers did loot and kill. The looted the money which was being enjoyed by a few thousand monarchs , a common man in india didnt lose much in comparison to a few kings. In fact a common man in india gained much after independence, for example a backward caste like Narendra modi became chief minister of the most industrially developed state in india.

    Britishers had the magnanimity to grant us freedom and respect it. They tried to teach us educate us without fearing that we may surpass them some day ,and treated us better than a higher caste treats a dalit.

    But do you think a islamic like Akbar or Hemu would show the magnanimity to give us freedom and give respect.

    Policy makers are right in choosing western thought over our own.

    The view of islamic scholars is that Indians are weaker than them, that India has so much resources that people are lazy. And hence where easily conquered.

    But thats not true, these are thoughts of people who still believe in a book written centuries ago.For this they paid a big prize in 1965 war and later wars.

    Just google "errors in quran" see for yourself and judge for yourself , one is to accept it as a work of GOD (god is supposed to be an entity with infinite intelligence.)

  10. In the medieval times europe was the most educated and tecnologically advanced region.

    And india was a place where hundreds of nations kept fighting with each other , one of the most uneducated and technologically backward place. The environment was totally inhibiting our potential for growth.

    The technology percolated slowly from china and europe to islamic world and then to india . this made us technologically weaker than middle east countries.
    The double handicap of backward ness and disunity was the real reason for the defeat of india at hands of islamic armies.

    Just imagine if there was war between pakistan and only a state in india like rajasthan. Plus the Punjab and Gujarat allied with pakistan (you would be surprised to know how much our ancesters hated each other). Rajasthan will lose for sure. This is what happened. For eg marathas were not supported by sikhs and others in battle of panipat.

    Islam gave the advantage of unity to arabs which was not present in india at that time. Today indian constitution which we inherited from british ,provides this unity to us. (Dr. Ambedhkar was a genius but even a genius can't craft a constitution , it's a work of several generations of british buerocrats)

    You would have noticed the unity of muslims in your daily life, for example how muslims support terrorists and foreigners over fellow indians.

    Don't be disheartened by petty taunts and jibes of pakistanis ;for exampleslike how our ancesters were slaves to them and all that. just imagine the magnitude of shame of pakistan went through ,when they were utterly humiliated in 1971 war at the hands of people who they considered slaves. which is a greater shame. Only the strong can forgive, just imagine the inferiority they felt when we forgave lakhs of POWs after 1971 war.

  11. The hatred in pakistan's mind towards us, is nothing but the reaction to this humiliation and fear faced by them due our recently achieved superiority.
    Just imagine how terrifying it would have been to realize that the people they considered weak and stupid, have outsmarted and grown stronger than they ever were in the past. The same that upper cast feels when seeing the rise of lower caste dalits. The same that we would feel if the son of a person, who works in our house as a servent , becomes the boss of our own child in our lifetime(it would really sting unless you are someone like Dalai lama, who forgave the Chineese).

    Now slowly pakistanis are forced to except superiority of western thought over islam, supremacy of democrazy over sharia, western education over madrassa education etc. They are twisting and bending the interpretations ,of line after line of quran, to justify their islamic conscience. But beware they only re-intrepret those verses which they think are useful to them to compete with us.Their ego would never allow them to re-interpret these lines,(Chapter 9: Surah Al-Tawbah (Repentance), verse nos.17, 23, 28, 29. Chapter 5: Surah Al-Ma'ida (The Table Spread) verse no.51), in a more humane way.

    Science and Technology is the power. Today with a few thousand nuclear armed agni-5 missles (can be produced if we allocate enough manpower and money which we posses), with the press of a button an indian can wipe out the existence of all islamic countries. Technology grants us such unimaginable power, even now we dont even realize its true potential.

    Pakistanis lacking the mental grit , to accept the series of defeats ;and destruction of every dear notion of their superiority , turned into a source of inferiority, have gone insane with hatred. Terrorism is an outcome of this insanity , and many more like covert bleeding by thousand wounds policy towards india etc. they equate jihad (supposed to be holy war) with terrorism this is how low they have fallen due to hatred.

    Its really amusing to watch the grotesque spectacles they perform , when they protest on their streets, simply the height of insanity ,induced by hatred. It reminds me of spoilt angry children throwing tantrums in front of their parents. Even people in india do such things but to a very lesser degree.

    Most educated indians are atheist, i think confusionisn really has chance in india. Our mind is more pshychologically and culturally equipped to accept Darwins theory than many westeners. Our PM can make a statement in india like "Ramayan is a fairy tale", if Obama had said "Bible is a fairytale" in front of American audience he would have lost his seat.

    Our national motto is so true and befitting "Only truth triumps in the end", Kudos to our policy makers and double kudos to us Indians for accepting such an atheistic constitution. Overcoming the teachings of several thousand of generations , kudos to those who realized the truth and choose to be an atheist.
    Compared to us Pakistanis couldnt even give Jinnah ,who gave them Pakistan, his last rites of burial as a Shia muslim.

  12. I think we should go a step further in harnessing science than westerners. We should consider technologies like human cloning , human genetic engineering etc which are still considered taboo in west. We should use these technologies to enhance our gene pool, to surpass even the limits of humanity. for example if we make individuals with 200 to 300 IQ or above , extremely creative, physically strongest and fastest children . We could achieve things like being the first country to land a person on mars, and even colonize mars etc .

    Just imagine whole of mars , a whole planet under Indian flag, whole country would go from rags to riches. And all this would happen in our lifetime. Even if we remain in our moral shackles and remain in our human limits, Someone else would do it eventually, like China or Japan or USA etc, just see how much the Chineese are spending on research in genetic engineerng, unknowingly or knowingly. one day we would grudgingly stand in queue for a visa travel to Chineese republic of mars.

    Farfetched ,unbelievable, impossible, science fiction, ramblings… so was the possibility of nuclear armed agni-5 a hundred years ago. So was the idea of walking on two legs to the ancesters of apes. Initially apes and humans were same the species but our ancesters took a bold step to walk on two legs, the risk by leaving the protection of trees , slowly taking up challenges and evolving. those who remained on tree in their comfort zones evolved in apes and we evolved into humans. Today we keep apes in zoos, as pets in cages . In the future humanity would again be at the cross roads.

    We represent 16% of worlds population living on mere 3% of the world's land mass, living in absymal conditions, 50% of our country defecates in the open, 4 in 5 of our children are malnourished. chineese face a similar problem, they are solving it by attempts like self damaging 1 child policy.

    We can either like the chineese shrink ourselves to fit our homes or expand our homes by choosing a more radical path. We have to choose a path, we can't keep on living like this . All of earth's landmass has been already occupied, europeans rule the continents of europe , australia , north america , south america , and many parts of asia. i think instead of fighting with each other we should try to make our lives better.

    I re-quote the famous maxxim " If there is no GOD , it has to be invented". The chineese are harworkers but we Indians are smart workers, Even if a genius puts in 1% more smart work , he would surpass the harworker by 100%. An average student by studying 18 hours a day can surpass a genius student, to get a higher rank in an exam like IIT. But even if the genius puts in 1 hour of extra study he can achieve more than the hardworking student.

    The most crucial technologies that are going to reshape the future are:-
    => Artificail intelligence
    => Android robots
    => genetic engineering
    => propulsion technology
    => space technologies

    we should opt for future oriented technologies in academia more than career oriented technogies.

    Thats all for now!

    i think we passed some time together and had fun! 🙂

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