Revisiting the EC-725 Saga

While it is perfectly justifiable to call for credible probity regarding any perceived or alleged impropriety and irregularity in the process of selecting the winner for the project to replace the Royal Malaysian Air Force’s (RMAF) Sikorsky-built S-61A-4 ‘Nuris’, the outright hostile and ill-informed postures adopted by member-parties of the ‘Pakatan Rakyat’ (PR) political coalition over the past week have, regrettably, revealed a dismal lack of knowledge and understanding of the methodologies applied for taking enlightened and informed decisions for procuring military hardware to sustain the force modernisation programmes of the Malaysian Armed Forces. Two instances of the PR’s flawed logic are highlighted below.

1) Contrary to what has been popularly claimed by some quarters, the process of selecting a replacement for the ‘Nuri’ did not commence with merely the floating of global tenders last year, but as far back as 2003, when an initial Staff Paper was prepared by RMAF HQ. This Staff Paper had by late 2004 been refined into a Position Paper and a year later had matured into an Air Staff Target. By 2006 this had morphed into the definitive Air Staff Requirement (ASQR) and it was only after this that global tenders were floated last November and a Technical Negotiations Committee (TNC) was established. The TNC’s members hailed from the RMAF, MINDEF and Ministry of Finance (MoF). Subject to a shortlisting of potential candidates (which in this case were Eurocopter’s EC-725 Cougar Mk2+, AgustaWestland’s AW-101 and Rosoboronexport’s Mi-17V-5), the TNC would next have identified the ultimate winner (which turned out to be the EC-725) by issuing a Letter of Intent (issued on September 15), following which a Price Negotiations Committee (PNC) would have to be created jointly by MINDEF and the MoF to visit Eurocopter’s facilities for on-site physical verifications (and not for flight evaluations or flight-tests, which were already conducted in April 2006 and December 2007 over a period totaling three weeks) and after that, negotiate the definitive sales & purchase contract. Following this, a Project Monitoring Team comprising personnel from MINDEF and the RMAF would have been raised to monitor and oversee project implementation and service induction of the new helicopters.

2) Nowhere has it been officially stated by MINDEF or RMAF HQ that a physical evaluation of the selected or shortlisted helicopters is MANDATORY prior to selecting the winner. In fact, it is an universally accepted practice to undertake physical evaluations of military hardware ONLY in cases where the hardware being offered is still a prototype and has not yet been ordered in bulk by a launch customer. And it was for this very reason that prior to ordering the Su-30MKM multi-role air dominance combat aircraft, the RMAF, from May 27 to June 4, 2001, had dispatched a flight evaluation team to Russia to a) verify the aircraft’s flight performance and handling qualities when firing guided/unguided weapons, verify the aircraft’s open-architecture avionics suite, verify the aircraft’s ground maintenance concepts, verify the aircraft’s specified integrated logistics system; and verify the aircraft’s aircrew training package and the technical type-training package for the ground crews. This type of on-site evaluation was done on board a generic Su-30MK, as the Su-30MKM being offered then had existed only on paper, and was later developed over a three-year period AFTER the procurement contract had been inked by mid-2003. In contrast, the EC-725, AW-101 and Mi-17V-5 are all in the series-production phase since 2004 and therefore no amount of physical flight/ground evaluations of these helicopters would have enabled the RMAF to gain any additional insights to the RMAF other than what has already been documented by Eurocopter, AgustaWestland and Rosoboronexport thus far.

Interestingly, even in India, when there was a recent three-cornered competition between the AW-101, Mi-17V-5 and Sikorsky’s S-92 underway to supply 12 VVIP transportation helicopters worth €600 million, the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) TNC conducted only an in-house evaluation of the competing tender bids, which subsequently established that between the three contenders the AW-101 came out as the preferred candidate due to its ‘fully ASQR compliant’ status. Only AFTER this did the IAF issue a Letter of Intent (LoI) to AgustaWestland and later dispatched its TNC to visit AgustaWestland’s UK-based industrial facilities in Yeovil to verify AgustaWestland’s tender submissions, following which a PNC was constituted.

In conclusion, if those parties presently claiming to represent the true national interests of Malaysia want to demonstrate their genuineness in terms of consistent adherence to public probity in matters concerning major government contracts, then they have to shrug off their xenophobic, politically motivated hostility and instead ask MINDEF for constructive explanations regarding the following:

1) In what way will the contract award to Eurocopter benefit Malaysia in terms of making the country a regional aerospace industrial hub for rotary-winged aircraft?

2) What is the quantum and type of direct and indirect industrial offsets being offered by Eurocopter through EADS, its parent company?

3) To what extent is Eurocopter prepared to fully localise the EC-725’s maintenance, repair and overhaul activities and over what time-frame?

4) What will be the future status of the RMAF’s existing 26 S-61A-4 Nuris? Given the fact that these helicopters have each logged in no more than 10,000 flight hours and are good to go another 40,000 hours, can these Nuris be upgraded and be transferred to the Royal Malaysian Navy, Malaysian Army or the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency?--Prasun K. Sengupta