Coast Guard Helicopter Crash Kills Three, Raises Concerns over Indigenous Fleet

Three Coast Guard personnel were killed when their Dhruv advanced light helicopter (ALH) crashed at Porbandar, Gujarat, on Sunday.

The ALH Mark-III was returning from a routine training sortie when it developed a technical issue while landing. The two pilots, Commandant Saurabh and Deputy Commandant SK Yadav, along with air crew diver Manoj Pradhan Navik, succumbed to injuries after being rushed to hospital.

This incident adds to a series of ALH crashes, including the October 2022 crash in Arunachal Pradesh that killed two officers and three soldiers, two back-to-back crashes in March 2023, and a May 2023 crash in Jammu and Kashmir.

These accidents have raised concerns over design and metallurgical flaws in the fleet, prompting safety upgrades and grounding of the helicopters in 2023. The ALH remains critical to the armed forces' self-reliance in defence production.