TheDefender said:
Yeah i know LCH is also gonna take time in its development same like the LCA.You know there are a lot of things to do in the development of sophisticated items for the military.So lets see what happens to the LCH.I dont understand why Indian Air Force and Indian Army wants indegnous items,i know that time is going no where and if they do not develop anything in time nothing is gonna happen because there are four countries in a row which are nuclear powers.But why only indignous.See what Pakistan has done,they made a joint venture with China in developing the thunders and they took the engines from Ukrine for the development of Al-Khalid, later all things can be done indegnously to save time and $$$.
ths shows how ignorant you are about the lch project,the project has already received funding from the indian airforce and is in an advanced stage of development ,with the first prototype expected to fly late next year.
this attack helicopter is a direct derivative of the alh dhruv using the same main rotor,tail rotor and transmission but with a redesigned body(the image of which has already been displayed),the avionics are likely to be developed using the indo-israeli technology and the avionics integration is to be done by a company know as datasol.
the lch will also have the same engine as the alh,this engine is a joint development between india and france and is currently undergoing ground tests,this engine is known as the shakti in india and ardiden 2h in france and is a derivative of the tm333-2c2 engines a variant of which power the current batch of the alh dhruv's,these engine will be replaced in the future by the shakti,which will be common for both the dhruv and the lch(may be a slightly uprated variant )
the advantage of this is that timescale of development is reduced ,the cost of development is reduced since the basic technologies like the rotor and gearbox are already developed and proven and all that they would require would be a slight redesign,also the maintainence cost will be reduced since many of the components would be interchangeable,production would be simplified since the same tooling would be used.
the alh is already in service with the indian armed forces(a total of 300 have been ordered by the indian armed forces and a a squadron is being acquired for the indian special forces),another feature of the alh dhruv is that it is weapons system capable ,it can easily converted from troop transport to combat support in a few hours .
the normal load out of the alh dhruv wsi includes 8 - 16 anti tank missiles ,2 rocket pods and the giat 20mm cannon . however it's drawback compared to the lch would be reduced stealth and manouverability.
a comparable type of development is the bell cobra which was developed from the bell huey and became a very successfull attack helicopter.
the indian air force is the prime sponsor for the lch programme and has expressed an interest in acquiring upto 60 attack helicopters initially.
