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The Indian Defence Ministry has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the acquisition of 75 basic trainer aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF). The procurement of 75 trainer aircraft is part of the government’s go-ahead to the IAF for the acquisition of 181 basic trainers.
The global giants including Embraer with their Tucano, Pilatus with their PC-7 or PC-/9, Raytheon with the T-6 Texan aircraft, Finmeccanica with their M-311 aircraft, Grob Aircraft Company with the G-120TP aircraft, EADS PZL with PZL-130-TC-11 Orik aircraft and Korea Aerospace Industries with the KT-1 aircraft will be in fray.
According to the RFP, the manufacturer must deliver the first 12 aircraft within 24 months of the contract. The remaining trainers will follow in batches. The RFP specifies that the aircraft should have been “recently certified”, since the IAF plans to keep the chosen trainer in its inventory for at least three decades.
According to the Defence Ministry, all clarifications regarding the RFP will be made in the pre-bidder’s conference this week and the IAF will evaluate the technical aspects of the trainer aircraft once the proposals are received.
In October last year, state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) had sent out requests for information (RFI) on at least five aircraft that could replace the currently grounded HPT-32 trainer with IAF. The Lack of basic trainer aircraft had caused the crisis in the Air Force Academy and a Request for information (RFI) was sent to Raytheon for T-6 Texan aircraft, Finnmeccanica for M-311 aircraft, Pilatus for the PC-21 aircraft, Grob for the G-120 TP aircraft and Embraer for their ‘Tucano’ academy.
The training schedule of the IAF was disrupted due to lack of trainer aircraft and the IAF had warned the Indian Defence Ministry that the situation is dire and the number of replacement trainer aircraft needed are about one hundred. Currently, there are more than 100 HPT-32 with the IAF but they have all been kept back in the hangars. The grounding by the IAF of their Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) designed and manufactured HPT-32 fleet was forced since the aircraft crash that killed two instructors during a flight from the Air Force Academy (AFA) at Dundigal.
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