Sunday, December 14, 2025 | 03:45 AM ISTहिंदी में पढें
Business Standard
Notification Icon
userprofile IconSearch

In a first, HAL assures 75% availability of Dhruv fleet

First 'performance based logistics' for indigenous military platform

Dhruv
premium

Dhruv choppers flying in the Siachen Glacier sector

Ajai Shukla New Delhi
In 2013, during the Uttarakhand floods, an embattled army and the air force conducted relentless rescue operations for two weeks with 22 Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH), flying more than 1,000 sorties to save thousands of lives.
 
Elsewhere, the Dhruv’s robust Shakti engine, optimised for high altitude flying operations, services the Indian Army’s daunting, 20,000 feet-high pickets on the Himalayan border, including the Siachen Glacier sector.
 
Yet, the Indian military has one problem with this high-performance, indigenous machine that will form the bulk of its light chopper fleet in the coming decades. It is that only six-seven out