By Vishnu Makhijani, IANS
Bareilly (Uttar Pradesh) : The Indian Air Force (IAF) has significantly enhanced its strategic reach against China by making fully operational a squadron of frontline Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighters at this sprawling airbase in northern India.
Over the next one year, another Su-30MKI squadron will also be made fully operational, along with a similar deployment of the combat jets at Tezpur in Assam. Maintenance facilities are being created both in Bareilly and Tezpur.
What is significant is not just the deployment of the aircraft. The “buddy-refuelling” will enable them stay in the air for up to a staggering 10 hours at a stretch, an IAF officer told a group of visiting journalists.
While the IAF flies the Il-78 midair refuelling tanker, this aircraft can only operate in Indian airspace. Buddy-refuelling, a Su-30 tanking up another, “gives us the tactical advantage of refuelling in enemy territory”, the officer explained.
This apart, the MKI variant of the Su-30 comes with a sophisticated array of electronic warfare and surveillance equipment that will fill gaps created by the retirement last year of the IAF’s MIG-25 spy planes, the officer pointed out.
And the arrival later this year of the first of three Il-78s equipped with the Israeli Phalcon airborne warning and control system (AWACS) will serve as a powerful force multiplier, giving the Su-30 a cutting edge advantage that few fighter jets anywhere in the world can boast of.
Explaining the maintenance facilities being created here, the chief engineering officer of the base, Group Captain Rajiv Gandotra, said these would comprise a hanger for eight aircraft that would be the IAF’s largest, an avionics lab and an engine bay.
The avionics lab and the engine bay are fully operational, while work on the hangar, spread over an area of 110×90 metres, began two years ago and is likely to be completed by next March.
Set up at a cost of Rs.60 million, the two facilities are a vital piece of infrastructure and enables IAF technicians perform three of the four levels of maintenance an aircraft undergoes.
“We can’t conduct overhauls but can effect major repairs for which the engines previously had to be sent to Russia. Short of an overhaul, no matter what the fault, the aircraft is ready to fly the very next day,” Gandotra pointed.
Engine overhauls, the fourth level of maintenance, will continue to be carried at the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) facility at Koraput in Orissa.
India had signed a deal with Russia in the early 1990s for the purchase of 40 Su-30s but there were of the K variety. All of them have now been upgraded to the MKI variant.
Another 140 aircraft will be built by HAL, but slippages in this prompted the IAF to ink another deal earlier this year for the purchase of 40 more fighters.
This deal has now become embroiled in a cost-escalation row that is likely to be resolved only when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh travels to Moscow in November for his annual summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.