Soaring to new heights on our helicopters

THE HELICOPTER PURCHASE.

Sakmongkol was not able to write his thoughts yesterday. He went outstation. The internet connection was not good. Since he is not a Starbucks addict nor does he go to public venues where there are wi-fi facilities, he had to suffer the excruciating agony of not being able to free his clogged mind.

Unfortunately too, he hasn’t got this habit of writing down notes in a moleskin or his previous 555 buku hutang book. Yes he used to write on the 555 buku hutang which reflects he has no class. Haha. But he remembers the Malaccan born Goh Keng Swee, Singapore’s former DPM , the person who studied at LSE and counted the socialist Harold Laski as one of his professors, also used the 555 book. Ahem….

He wanted to write something on the purchase of the cougar helicopters announced by the PM last 2 weeks. The deal was signed 2 days before sakmongkol’s former boss, the man who would be PM exited the hallowed grounds of MINDEF. Now let’s see.

The Malaysian Government intends to buy 12 units to replace their aging Sikorsky S-61 Sea King. In Malaysia it is called the Nuri helicopters. Najib once rode on such a model with his bodyguard when it developed engine trouble and had to make an emergency landing somewhere.

And Nuri helicopters were involved in many fatal mishaps which require MINDEF take a serious and long look at replacing them.

The whole brouhaha started when one captain Zahar Hashim wrote a letter which appeared on Malaysia Today, casting aspersions and throwing Molotov-esque doubts at the deal. If this retired captain from Mentari Services, is not an interested party to the deal, sakmongkol would find more bullets to fire with. Since captain Zahar is an interested party to the deal, the whole picture is made different. It makes his complaints, even if they are genuine, capable of looking and sounding sour-grapeish. His company, Mentari Services failed to secure the lucrative deal. And that may be the essence of his case..

When sakmongkol wrote on the questionable Sukhoi deal, he was commenting on the purchase by two different countries of the same model- SU-30MK. India bought as USD40million, while Malaysia bought at USD50million. There you are comparing apples to apples.

Even that has invited a response from one Shaftec who has produced a lengthy rebuttal by regurgitating a manual of technical specifications which would have required a mechanical engineer’s expertise to unravel them.

In the case of this helicopter, our arguments would be rendered emasculate because:-

We are not comparing even similar products. Sakmongkol hates this because it deprives him of the bullets to fire. We are comparing the cougar helicopters to the ones offered by Captain Zahar, another Russian made helicopter. Its not a comparison of apples with apples. Its more like comparing a Bentley Arnage or Bentley Azure with the proton Wira.

The Eurocopter EC 725 Cougar is a long-range tactical transport helicopter developed from the Super Puma/Cougar family for military use. It is a twin-engined aircraft and can carry up to 29 seated troops along with 2 crew, depending on customer configuration. The helicopter is marketed for troop transport, casualty evacuation, and combat search and rescue duties. In other words it is purpose built for military duties.

An industry source says that several international companies had bid hard to win the tender but it was clear that the EC725 was the strongest contender due to its ability to keep on flying even when running out of hydraulic oil.

We can go into the numbers and dissect them to support our arguments. Sakmongkol will not go into the technical details. We must assume the technical people at MINDEF must have done a thorough comparison. And the merits of the two helicopters( in this case between the Cougar and Kazan) can be debated till blue in the face and the cows come home, by their respective experts. Sakmongkol is certainly not in that category.

It’s the whole premise of our arguments that sakmongkol is questioning. Do we go on building a case based on a failed complainant on the deal? Has captain Zahar aired his complaint because he didn’t get the contract?. The price difference is so humongous that even the most preternatural( read bloodsucker as in corrupt prone) officious military assessors are likely to avoid like the leper. The price difference alone is a crater that is impossible to cover. The question is why such a huge price difference?

Which can only suggest that maybe the copters offered by Kelowna through Mentari services offered less sophisticated technical specifications.

Sakmongkol was once involved in a defence contractor’s bid to supply bulk food to the MINDEF. It had submitted the best deal in terms of price. Sakmongkol stupidly raised the matter with the minister then and even met up with the technical committee evaluating the tender. We found out to my embarrassment and to the officers condescending glee, the price was the cheapest, because the tender omitted to include a very important product in his tender. Since the omitted but crucial product was a substantial cost item, its omission made his tender appeared to be the best.

We don’t know the details what captain Zahar offered but there are certainly grounds to believe that such a huge price difference between his Kazan and Eurocopter’s Cougar may have been caused by some major technical differences

SUPPLIER	HELICOPTER	PRICE(RM)
EUROCOPTER	Cougar EC-725	2.32 billion
KELOWNA	Kazan MI-172	898 million
SIKORSKY	Sikorsky S 92	1.45 billion

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Captain Zahar opined that if the government buy’s the Kazan, it would have saved a lot of money and continued his assault by asking rhetorically, that the money saved could be used for development purposes. We shall not go into that and sakmongkol finds his attempts to make his case relevant by producing data on GDP of various countries so pedantic.

Of some merit perhaps, was his concern about the manner in which the decision to buy the cougar copters was made. It was made before a thorough physical and actual assessment on the prowess of the helicopters had taken place. If that were true, then it would certainly raise the possibility that the decision to buy cougar copters was already decided before hand.

This should have been the issue not Captain Zahar’s failed bid. Would captain Zahar raised the matter, had it been Kazan that was selected and that decision too, was pre-determined?