Indian Army Aviation 2025
Contents: Contributors. Acronyms and Abbreviations. Foreword. I. Inaugural Address: 1. Lieutenant General B.S. Thakur. II. Approach paper: 2. Optimisation of Indian Army Aviation--an approach/Vijay Oberoi. III. Presentation papers: 3. Historic overview of army aviation/K. Raja Menon. 4. Army Aviation Structures in USA, UK, France and Germany: evolution, importance, roles and major air assets/Devinder Singh. 5. Army Aviation Structures in Israel, Russia, China and Pakistan/G.S. Sihota. 6. Optimising the aviation corps/Jasjit Singh. 7. Indian Army Aviation Corps: structures for future security challenges and the key focus areas/Vinod Pasricha. 8. Aviation corps of the Indian Army: Areas of optimisation and revitalisation to include structures, aviation platforms and doctrinal aspects/Vinay Shankar. 9. Integration of attack helicopters with joint operations on land/Gurmeet Kanwal. 10. Requirement of fixed-wing Aircraft for Indian Army Aviation/Amitava Mukherjee. IV. Excerpts from Interactive sessions: 11. New Delhi Seminar. 12. Pune Seminar. 13. Some helicopters in the service of world armies/U.S. Rathore.
"Indian Army Aviation became an independent corps of the Army in 1986. Today, Army Aviation has the largest number of helicopters amongst the three services. Yet, the expansion of this vital corps has been slow, mainly on account of opposition from the Indian Air Force (IAF). In the tactical arena, army formations and units require intimate support from the air. This can be best provided by Army Aviation. Unfortunately, on account of "Turf" considerations, the logical growth of Army Aviation has been hamstrung. The result is missed opportunities in battle.
Army Aviation has braved the neglect of years and has performed creditably with its meager resources in multi-terrain and operational conditions, but needs to rapidly modernise. This volume is aimed at generating debate and discussion on various aspects of Army Aviation so that this important component of the army becomes a force multiplier par excellence and be an important battle winning factor in future wars and conflicts." (jacket)
