Government Approves Purchase Of 12 Locally Built Dornier Do 228 Aircraft For The Indian Navy

The Indian government on Wednesday (23 November) approved the purchase of 12 Dornier Do 228 aircraft. The aircraft will be produced locally by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and will be used by the Indian Navy for maritime surveillance and patrol.

HAL holds the licence to locally produce the Dornier Do 228. It has produced 125 aircraft, since 1983, supplying the Indian Armed Forces and also exporting the aircraft to Indian Ocean nations of Seychelles and Mauritius. The aircraft would be manufactured at HAL's Kanpur and Lucknow facilities. In 2006, indigenous content in the aircraft stood at 61 per cent.

The Dornier Do 228 was designed and developed by Dornier GmbH in the late 1970s. The aircraft cockpit allows for a two-person operation, and can carry 19 passengers in the commuter configuration. Maritime surveillance and patrol variants of the Do 228 have been modified by HAL to cater for a host of equipment demanded by the navy including surveillance radar, FLIR (forward looking infrared), ESM (electronic support measures), satellite communications, data links, speech secrecy equipment, TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system) and EGPWS (enhanced ground proximity warning system), among others.