The IAF’s Chinook heavy-lift helicopters would be equipped with a specially designed ‘humanitarian assistance and disaster relief platform’ that would be carried in the underslung mode for evacuating people, ferry relief teams and equipment, and undertake fire-fighting operations.

The Ministry of Defence has reached out to the industry through its Innovation in Defence Excellence (IDeX) scheme to develop a lightweight modular underslung platform for mass casualty evacuation with seating capability of minimum of 30 that can be underslung to rescue a large number of casualties.

The platform would also have a module with rapid water suction, storage and dispensation capability for carrying out firefighting operations from aircraft. Besides dealing with calamities in built up areas, this could also be used to combat forest fires.

The platform, slung under the helicopter with a cable of requisite length, would be positioned close to the ground and enable quick evacuation from buildings, flood hit areas, hilly terrain and other disaster affected areas where a helicopter may not be able to land, Air Force sources said. The other option in such a situation is to individually winch up casualties, which is time consuming and also difficult if a person is injured.

The platform, according to the IDeX document, would have multiple safety features to ensure protection of rescued persons, individual restraints or seat belts, technology to preserve human life like ballistic parachute, communication system with the helicopter crew and ground teams, good visibility to enable carriage of rescue assistance teams, rapid ingress and egress design and stability in flight to prevent any swing.

The IAF had inducted the US-made Boeing CH-47F(I) Chinook tandem-rotor multi mission helicopter in March 2019 with the Chandigarh-based No.126 Helicopter Unit. A total of 15 Chinooks were procured, with half the fleet operating with No.124 Helicopter Unit based at Mohanbari in Assam.

Chinooks have a payload capacity of up to 55 persons, 24 stretchers or 12,000 kg cargo. These are deployed regularly for air maintenance missions to the Himalayan frontier in the northern as well as the eastern theatres, ferrying in troops, artillery guns, equipment and road construction machinery, as well as disaster relief operations.

Chinooks have also been tasked for special operations and other logistical missions across the country. In addition, they have been called upon to assist other government agencies, the most recent being the test flight of Indian Space Research Organisation’s Pushpak Reusable Launch Vehicle, where a Chinook was used to drop the craft from an altitude of 4,500 meters.

Courtesy: The Tribune India: 23rd March , 2024