It’s the matter of pride and honor for Chandigarh as it has now become the base for the US-made heavy lift helicopters, Chinook that is acquired by the Indian Air Force. All the Chinooks will be based at the 3 BRD (Base Repair Depot) Indian Airforce Station in Chandigarh.
As per the sources, new facilities are being established to make Chandigarh the new base for Chinook. Chandigarh will be the base for a few of the Chinook air crafts including two hangars along with a maintenance bay. It will also have associated technical as well as the logistics facilities for the operation of Chinooks.
Functions of Chandigarh- based Chinooks
- All Chinooks are being based in Chandigarh so that they can assist Indian Air Force in their much-needed fillip to lift heavy objects.
- Chinooks can airlift heavy objects and have the payload capacity of over 10 tons.
- Artillery, engineering, and road construction equipment, vehicles, all kind of supplies to mountain areas including north and north- east and other military troops will be airlifted by these Chinooks.
- Earlier, these items were airlifted by the Soviet-era Mi-26 helicopters that are also based in Chandigarh.
- Initially, there were four Mi-26s with the Indian Air force here in Chandigarh but now they have just one aircraft that is in serviceable conditions.
Relation between Chandigarh & Chinook
Chandigarh plays a vital role to have major military and IAF base in the city. The city beautiful will be the third city in India to have airbase to have new air crafts in the Western Air Command. Chinook is also well familiar with the Chandigarh base as 3 of the British Royal Air Force had touched the city’s ground moving towards Nepal during the flood relief operations in the year 2015. Those air crafts were later re-assembled and tested to fly before flying back to their homeland.
More about Chinook air crafts in India
Well, more Chinooks are likely to fly in India by next year. Off lately, India and the US had signed a deal for 15 CH-47 Chinook helicopters along with other four flying machines, which is likely to arrive by next year in 2018. The entire cost of the work is pegged at Rs 150 crore that will include a deal of 22 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.
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