US aerospace and defence company Lockheed Martin expects India’s defence ministry to approve a formal letter of request to be sent to the US government for an additional six C-130J Super Hercules military transport aircraft within the next couple of months, according to Orville Prins, the company’s vice-president for business development in India. Under the contract, worth nearly $1 billion and signed in 2008 for six C-130J aircraft, India had an option to buy six more planes.
Prins spoke to Business Standard from his company’s facility in Marietta, near Atlanta, Georgia, shortly after Lockheed Martin formally delivered India’s first C-130J aircraft to the US Air Force (USAF), which received it on behalf of the Indian Air Force (IAF). Two C-130Js will be flown by IAF crews to India early next year, in late January or early February. They are expected to arrive in time to be shown at the Aero India 2011 expo from February 9-13 in Bangalore.
The remaining four aircraft will be delivered by late summer of next year, months ahead of schedule, according to Lockheed Martin.
The company expects the order for the additional six C-130J aircraft to be identical or very similar to the initial order. Prins said the IAF crews, who had been training with the machines in the US for the past few months, were very pleased with their experience.
The planes have been modified and specially equipped for special mission roles. The IAF requirements included capability for precision low-level flying, airdrops, landing in blackout conditions, and features to ensure survivability in hostile air defence environments. The IAF models are the longer fuselage variant of the C-130J, similar to those used by the USAF.
While Pakistan has operated C-130 aircraft for several years, this will be India’s first experience with any variant of this machine. Additional support and infrastructure requirements as a new operator have added to the price tag of the initial order, according to Prins. He pointed out that if the IAF decides to station the additional aircraft at the Hindan air base near New Delhi, along with the first six planes, the support requirements will be proportionately lower, even as the baseline price for the aircraft would remain the same for the follow-up order.
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The aircraft delivered to the IAF will not have some advanced communications security equipment such as high precision global positioning system, as India is yet to sign certain security agreements, including the Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement, or CISMOA, with the US government. But Prins said Lockheed Martin had found alternate solutions to meet IAF requirements for these functions.
The C-130J order will mark the first induction of US military aircraft into the IAF in over four decades. Lockheed Martin is also in the fray for a number of other defence deals to supply equipment to the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force, and considers its F-16IN a “strong competitor” in the race to sell 126 fighter jets to the IAF, an order expected to be worth $12 billion. Says Prins, “We view the market in India as part of the transformative relationship between India and the US.”