The Indian Air Force received the first four of the 15 Boeing CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopters on Sunday, 10 February.
While the induction of the helicopter is being seen as a shot in the arm for the air force, false claims related to it have already started doing the rounds on social media.
CLAIM
The Quint could locate at least two Facebook pages which have made similar false claims about Chinook.
Facebook page I Support Narendra Bhai Modi Bjp has shared a video of Chinook with the caption “अमेरिका"चिनूक"हेलीकॉप्टर NATOदेशो के अलावा किसी को नहीं बेचता है भारत विश्व का पहला गैर नाटो देश है जिसे यह मिला है नमो नमः”
Another page Yogi Adityanath - True Indian has shared images of the helicopter with the caption “अमेरिका चिनूक हेलीकाप्टर नाटो देश के आलावा किसी भी देश को नहीं बेचता ..भारत नाटो का सदस्य नहीं है फिर भी नमो चिनूक को ले आये”
Both the captions roughly translate to “US sells Chinook helicopters only to NATO countries. India is the first non-NATO country to have received it”. The captions also credit Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the ‘feat’.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European countries.
TRUE OR FALSE
The claims are false as The Quint found out that a number of non-NATO countries have Chinook in their air force’s fleet.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
The post by I Support Narendra Bhai Modi Bjp had 1,128 shares while the one by Yogi Adityanath - True Indian had 1,732 shares till this article was written
Boeing, which is the manufacturer of the Chinook helicopter says in its official website that Chinook is used by more than 19 countries. The website specifically mentions a few of these countries.
Out of the countries listed here, Australia, Japan, South Korea and United Arab Emirates are non-NATO ones.
However, this list only consists of 11 countries, while at least 19 countries own Chinooks, as mentioned above. The fact has also been backed by an Economic Times report on the Chinooks arriving to India.
A Wikipedia page listed all the existing Chinook-owning countries. The list has the name of eight more non-NATO countries which have Chinook in their fleet. The Quint could locate sources to suggest the same for each of these countries.
Taiwan had signed a contract for nine Boeing CH-47SD (Super D) Chinook helicopters in 2000.
Egypt had originally purchased the CH-47C Chinooks back in 1980.
Iran had conducted war exercises involving CH-47 Chinooks as recently as in January 2019.
In the case of Libya, the country struck a huge arms contract with Italy in 1976. Italy, however, is a NATO country.
Morocco received three CH-47D Chinooks in 2015.
Boeing had won a new contract for supplying Chinooks to Saudi Arabia in 2018.
In 2016, Singapore selected the Airbus’ H225M and Boeing CH-47F Chinook to recapitalise its fleet.
The Thai armed force was in fact looking to replace its Chinook fleet with Russia’s Mi-17V5 helicopters in 2016.
Thus, as it stands, majority of the Chinook-owning countries, including India now, are in fact non-NATO countries.
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