Why no Pakistani helicopter manufacturing/assembling program?

[Tayyab1796]

Pakistan must consider building her own helicopter atleast a medium lift which can be converted to an attack role should the need be , Blackhawk is my favourite chopper and there are atleast 10 different versions of it , sea role, ambulance role, rocket attack role, special opeartions role, emergency relief role etc.

Pakistan is an area prone to natural disasters of all magnitudes(and alot of our area is remote) so its very essential that we have alot of helicopters( medium lift ones) that can do relief operations and can also act as attack or escort helicopter.

I have a suggestion , do we know of any abandoned helicopter project because someone else's loss(for 'Not needed anymore' and thus discarded in the bin) might be our gain.

 

[Nishan_101]

Dear,

Pakistan operates a very small Chopper Fleet, with ~40 Attack (AH-1 Cobra) , 60~80 Medium Transport (Mi17,Bell412,Puma), 20~30 Small Transport (Aluette/Lama,Fennec), and ~20 Marine. This small requirement does not warrant an economically viable Helicopter development program, since you need to produce at-least 150~200 articles to get break even.

Many defense programs like F22 and B2 have been financial burden on US economy since the 750+ F22 mark and 60+ B2 mark were not reached. The development cost of these programs was around 60 Billion USD each just for R&D.

Pakistan cannot afford to invest 200~500 Million USD on an R&D effort just to produce 30~40 articles of a single type.

Its much much cheaper to buy them off the shelf for the time being.

Regards,
Sapper

You are quite right that it has very small fleet but you and everyone must agree on one thing that they need more choppers for army as well as for air-force and navy. Then if they don't want to investing in joint ventures or R&D, Then it will be best to go for license production(through PAC) like: 50-60 tiger to replace ~40 Attack (AH-1 Cobra), 100 EH-101 to replace 60~80 Medium Transport (Mi17,Bell412,Puma),40 ***-550 Fennec to replace 20~30 Small Transport (Aluette/Lama,Fennec), and tell me what is this"20 Marine". And even to produce for navy and for the Air-Force, the amount of choppers they require.

 

[Tayyab1796]

ok , let's get the facts straight :

Does Pakistan need helicopters ?

yes we do because our neighbour to the east has got alot of armour and there is no better way of taking on armour then to use helicopters , also alot of our area is remote and is likely to be that way for the foreseeable future and owing to natural disasters that strike our land off and on ,we need helicopters .

Should we buy or manufacture /joint venture ?

Time has taught us that american and european suppliers are not trust worthy they may impose sanctions upon our land once their business finishes in Afghanistan so we should opt for Turkey or China . A joint venture is the best option (though expensive) but its very helpful in the long run also when china starts making her own engines our possiblities to make modifications and future research would multiply.
Pakistan's economic problems are going to be very grave in the future owing to the 'fruits of democracy' brought by 'Mr.10%' . Only china may be providing us interest free credit for such ventures or else like I wrote earlier we may wanna look for an 'abandoned helicopter project' and then invite China for a joint venture in that after the project appraisal .

 

[tinguzzz]

I dont know why you people can't make helicopter.Its very easy All you need
->a fan
->an inverter battery to run fan
->a wakie talkie
->a helicopter frame with 2 seat
->most important thing a regulator to control the speed of fan
->a table fan at the tail of helicopter
reverse the fan connect it with battery...battery should be fully charge
assemble all thing together.You will get full lifter weight helicopter.....

no need to thanks...

regards,
Tingumaster
Helicopter engineer

 

[Sapper]

My Laptop Is (HCL) Hindustan computers Limited, and My Operating system is Bharat Operating System(BOS)

And My Question for you is still Pending, Hope You answer it for me..
Regards
LCA tejas

Dear,

An intel based machine, with an Debain based distribution is hardly a result of genuine R&D.

You want to know what R&D is, read about the history of GNU and Richard-Stallmans and his team, who took 15 years just to re-code the Unix packages already available for Unix, and the work Linus-Trovalds and his fans had to do to perfect his kernel, just to act as a replacement for Unix kernel. And even then, the actual Unix kernel and distributions was the result of Bell Labs after decades of work and millions of man-hours or R&D.

But even then, I am impressed, just like I was when i saw one of my friends use a license produced laptop made in Pakistan (Premio based on Intel P4 chipset) with customized Ubuntu OS. It failed miserably in market 'cause it lacked financial viability in comparison to HP, Dell and Acer models already available in market.

If you have seen Schweizer S300 helicopter, or Aluette/Lama helicopter, you will notice that its not "hard" to replicate the fuselage and avionics, except for the engine. Even their engine are very simple and can be replicated easily using only the machines that were available in my University's machine shop (It was probably because it was set up by retired airforce personnel). However quality of product is hard to match, and afterwards when you calculate the total cost, it costs even higher when you count the maintenance and operating costs.

Everything boils down to reliability and cost-effectiveness. Pakistan cannot match both, and that's the reason we are staying away from dumping 200~500 million USD into researching something so trivial for aviation industries of Europe.

You are correct, we lack the civilian industrial setup to ease our way into researching things like this. Currently there is rarely any need of Helicopter/Small-Aircraft usage in Pakistan, and that will remain the case for foreseeable future.

We went for shared R&D for JF17 only because we needed them in huge numbers ... 250+. We do not need that many heli's for now, and hence no current initiative to launch massive R&D effort as well.

Regards,
Sapper

 

[Super Falcon]

as we alll know china is very good at making duplicates and china have black hawks of usa they can make copies of black hawk with few design changes so usa dont get china in trouble and we sign deal with them similar of JF 17 we get more customers sooner than JF 17 africa can buy it in cheap prizes for sure they need more helis than anyone because they cant buy most expansive helos from russia and usa

 

[Haanzo]

china will think a 1000 times before copying the blackhawk ....it would be better if they make engines first ......you can wrap around any chopper airframe around it ...for fighter aircraft its a different ball game altogater

 

[desiman]

I dont know why you people can't make helicopter.Its very easy All you need
->a fan
->an inverter battery to run fan
->a wakie talkie
->a helicopter frame with 2 seat
->most important thing a regulator to control the speed of fan
->a table fan at the tail of helicopter
reverse the fan connect it with battery...battery should be fully charge
assemble all thing together.You will get full lifter weight helicopter.....

no need to thanks...

regards,
Tingumaster
Helicopter engineer

Hilarious lol

 

[farhan_9909]

I dont know why you people can't make helicopter.Its very easy All you need
->a fan
->an inverter battery to run fan
->a wakie talkie
->a helicopter frame with 2 seat
->most important thing a regulator to control the speed of fan
->a table fan at the tail of helicopter
reverse the fan connect it with battery...battery should be fully charge
assemble all thing together.You will get full lifter weight helicopter.....

no need to thanks...

regards,
Tingumaster
Helicopter engineer

we dnt want heli like HAL LCH..we are talking about true attack heli nt HAL LCH type

and anyways thanx for the idea

 

[Quwa]

Pakistan must consider building her own helicopter atleast a medium lift which can be converted to an attack role should the need be , Blackhawk is my favourite chopper and there are atleast 10 different versions of it , sea role, ambulance role, rocket attack role, special opeartions role, emergency relief role etc.

Pakistan is an area prone to natural disasters of all magnitudes(and alot of our area is remote) so its very essential that we have alot of helicopters( medium lift ones) that can do relief operations and can also act as attack or escort helicopter.

I have a suggestion , do we know of any abandoned helicopter project because someone else's loss(for 'Not needed anymore' and thus discarded in the bin) might be our gain.

Agreed, but at this time Pakistan doesn't have the funds nor vision to undertake such a project. I would like to see us procure a design such as AW149 or Z-15 to be used as a standard platform by PA, PN, PAF, Frontier Corps, etc, as well as civil services such as police, search and rescue, hospitals, etc. A large enough requirement at home would justify the costs associated with acquiring local manufacturing capabilities. However, this is at best a long-term possibility - i.e. post 2020 - for the time being we'll just see more Bell-412EP, Mi-171, and maybe a limited number of NH-90/S-70 type helicopters to replace the Seaking in PN.

 

[jamal18]

One idea would be to remake an older helicopter.

For example, a remade Puma; with upgraded avionics, slightly redesigned fuselage and new engine.

This would not create the 'latest' helicopter, but it would be cheap, indigenous and provide a kick start for the domestic helicopter industry.

Tot would not be a problem.

 

[SU-33]

I think if no mastery of the air, the survival rate of helicopter will very low.
so strong air force is more important

 

[flameboard]

To make an airplane you need people who specialize in that field and to make a helicopter you need people who specialize that particular field of aeronautics. Plus in some areas helicopters can be more difficult for example I have heard that making helicopter engine is more complex than a jet for an airplane.
This is what we did to Selex Galileo we improved our relationship with the company transfered UAV technology and with no trouble at all we are now making a UCAV, and still remain on good terms with the company.

If Pakistan were to seek an easy time saving and fast solution the best thing to do would be to buy Atak helicopters form Tukey along with 100% technology transfer. After that Pakistan can be well on its way to make any types of helicopters it sees fit, all you would need are our brilliant Pakistani engineers.

 

[rdxsumo]

The talks shouldn't be about expenses of a heli plan. Pak has already done joint productions in sabmarines, fighter planes etc which are much more bigger, challenging and expensive ventures than helis. I think helis don't seem to be the top priority at the moment. If it comes to that point, I think joint ventures and funds would not be a problem.

Regards,

 

[dr_jawwad71]

Nice question....
I believe that Pakistan should start manufacturing its own helicopter at lower scale. beginning from scratch with least capital and gradually acquiring the technology and advancement.