Security may tail PM till take-off point
Saurabh Sinha
[ Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:42:11 amTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1669460.cms
 
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates

NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister's security could soon be touching a new high. The agencies in charge of his security want their vehicles to follow PM's plane to the take-off point at IGI Airport.

The PM and other high dignitaries board their special aircraft from Palam technical area which lies on the secondary runway. Then this VVIP plane has to taxi a long way to reach the airport's main runway from where it takes off.

"The taxiway connecting the secondary runway with the main one has some service lanes connected to it. Vehicles of different agencies like airlines, AAI, security and fire service are always moving in the airfield area.

There have been incidents of vehicles sometimes straying — incursion in aviation parlance — on moving planes' path. Security agencies want to escort the PM's plane to ensure that no incursion — accidental or otherwise — happens when his taxiing aircraft is heading for the main runway," said highly placed sources.

Security agencies are learnt to have asked IGI Airport to make this possible by training drivers to drive on airfields. The airport, in turn, referred the matter to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) as the issue is related to airfield safety.

"The idea is to have two vehicles at an equal distance behind the wings of the VVIP Boeing 737. The jet blast from engine travels about six to eight metres. Whether and how a vehicle can remain outside this hazardous area is being studied.

A few dummy runs would be carried out by having vehicles drive behind a 737 to check the feasibility of such an operation," said DGCA sources. A large number of drivers would have to be trained to perfectly synchronise their movement behind the VVIP aircraft.

In the past also, demands for escorting dignitaries' aircraft have been raised. Sources said that when Bill Clinton came as US President some years back, the Americans also wanted their vehicles near Air Force One.

"It was pointed out that the huge Jumbo would occupy almost the entire runway and taking vehicles along it on the kutcha path abutting the runway would not be possible. Similar demands were raised when George Bush came earlier this year," said sources.

But these demands were not accepted as Indian agencies firmly told the Americans that IGI had been completely secured for the American Prez and there was no need for them to be on the runway near the taxiing Jumbo.

"We will ourselves do all that is required to ensure safety of our or visiting foreign dignitaries. The feasibility of our own security personnel escorting the PM is being studied and then we may extend this to high risk visiting VVIPs too," said a source. The new airport being developed here is likely to have a separate wing for VVIPs.

First civilian pilot to fly military aircraft

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=9&theme=&usrsess=1&id=121529

Statesman News Service

BHUBANESWAR, June 27: A member of the Bhubaneswar Flying Club, Captain Niroop Mohanty, has become the first Indian civilian to fly a military aircraft.
At the recently held training session for military aircraft flying at the Standtoft airfield in Yorkshire, England, Captain Mohanty was the only Indian civilian to receive an invitation. He successfully completed the training that consisted of six sorties of one hour each, followed by a solo sortie of half-an-hour.
Captain Mohanty flew the Jet Provost which is used for advanced jet training as well as a ground attack fighter. The aircraft is currently used by the Indian Air Force’s aerobatic team, the Surya Kirans. Hailing from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, Mr Mohanty was formerly the vice-president (HR) of Tata Steel.
On the England experiment, Mr Mohanty said, apart from general handling, lot of emphasis was placed on emergencies, including engine failure, electrical failure and hydraulic failure. Flawless landings, spins and recovery were also practised during the session.
A special feature of the training was the use of the ejection seat. As military jets have poor gliding characteristics, it is necessary for the pilot to be able to eject safely and descend by parachute. “I have endorsements on 10 types of aircraft on my licence. Since civilians in India are not permitted to fly military aircraft, I was able to have this privilege only in the UK,” he said.

Times of India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1689880.cms

Boeing aircraft makes emergency landing at IGIA
[ Thursday, June 29, 2006 01:44:41 pmPTI ]
 
 
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates

NEW DELHI: A Boeing aircraft with 14 passengers onboard on Thursday landed safely at the Indira Gandhi International Airport after an engine trouble.

The Boeing 707 aircraft of the Aviation Research Corps landed amid full emergency measures at 12.50 pm after the pilot informed to the Air Traffic Controller that the third engine of the plane had shut down.

 

Aviation Research Corps?

-- Edited by karatecatman at 16:49, 2006-06-29

ABN397 wrote:

---

This might be the Aviation Research Centre, an organization under the Home Ministry like RAW. Its purpose is to spy from the air. Not much is known about what exactly they spy on. They used to fly AN-32s earlier and their main base was (is?) Charbatia near Cuttack. They might be the only operators of 707s now

---

what exactly is their mandate? any clue.  And what kind of spying will they do with plane as large as B707.

rgds

VT-ASJ

Aseem wrote:

---

what exactly is their mandate? any clue.  And what kind of spying will they do with plane as large as B707.
rgds
VT-ASJ

---

Now I am speculating, but the idea may be to fly close to the Pakistani or Tibetan border and try to pick up radio transmissions.
Incidentally, our DRDO was trying to develop an AWACS based on an Avro 748. It had a giant radar dish mounted over the fuselage. Unfortunately the support of the dish collapsed and the plane crashed on a flight from Arakkonam naval air base in 1998 or so, also killing the scientists who were testing it.

Here it is!!

Many thanks to a source in Defence.

The ARC is the SIGINT (signals intelligence) arm of the RAW. It has stations in Dehradun, Tissukiya, Assam, Chakratta (near Cuttak) in Orissa, and at Palam Airport, Delhi. It reports to the Director General of Security and RAW.

                                                   ***

Bureaucratic wrangling and turf battles between India's civilian and military intelligence agencies, exacerbated by budgetary squabbles, continue to hamper efforts to modernise the country's shadowy and highly classified Aviation Research Centre (ARC).

Run by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence agency that reports directly to the prime minister, ARC is responsible for communication and electronic surveillance along the borders with Pakistan and China.

Its assets of ageing fixed-wing transport and light aircraft like Russian IL-76s and AN-32s, 707s and General Dynamics Gulfstream III/SRA-1s and upgraded Gulfstream IV/SRA-4 jets of the US and obsolete helicopter fleet are tasked with gathering "actionable" information via airborne signal intelligence (SIGINT) operations and photo reconnaissance flights along its northern and eastern frontiers.

ARC inputs constitute the bulk of the monthly intelligence forecasts to the Indian military, particularly the army, on the Pakistani and Chinese military's order of battle and tables of organisation.

Its responsibilities also include detailing the neighbours' immediate military capabilities, organizational structure, mission essential personnel and present equipment deployment.

But there is plenty of criticism.

"The output by ARC's fleet of obsolete, lumbering aircraft fitted with outdated Western surveillance sensors and optical electronic systems that are capable of limited penetration into enemy territory remain restrictive in a real time situation," a senior military officer said, declining to be identified.

He asserted that the 44-year-old ARC's output with analogue and not digital capability diluted "immediate operational utility" and made the images and accompanying analysis "tactically unsound".

"It (ARC) also fails to provide an overall strategic landscape despite the large amounts of money lavished upon it," he added.

ARC was established in 1962 with help from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was nervous about China. RAW came up later.

ARC operates from New Delhi's Palam airport, Charbatia in Orissa and Dumduma in Assam, while its rotary wing fleet sparingly uses Chakrata bordering Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.

ARC's helicopter fleet comprises Russian MI-8s and a mix of locally built Cheetahs (locally modified French Alouette IIs) and Chetak's (Alouette IIIs), many of which are used to transport Special Frontier Force (SFF) commandos from their base at Sirsawa, 250 km north of New Delhi, for "dedicated" tasks at the behest of RAW operatives or from the Intelligence Bureau, the domestic security agency.

These involve "surgical strikes" on terrorist targets based on "pinpoint" intelligence, official sources said.

ARC's activities are to an extent supplemented by the Indian Air Force's fleet of four MiG 25s (NATO reporting name Foxbat) and Avro HS 748s and the Indian Navy's Dornier 228s.

But turf battles between the civilian and military intelligence agencies, which had intensified following feeble attempts to revamp the country's information gathering capabilities five years ago, rarely lead to close cooperation or information sharing between RAW and the military, intelligence sources said.

In the reorganisation process RAW successfully fought off moves by the army to merge ARC with its Directorate General of Military Intelligence.

The army runs its own Defence Image Processing and Imagery Centre with the ability to download images from satellites but depends heavily on RAW, the Intelligence Bureau and inputs from paramilitary forces for a "complete" picture of the border areas.

ARC's aircraft are mainly operated and maintained by IAF personnel seconded to it for limited durations. But it also has a small corps of pilots and ground crew of its own, some of which were responsible till 2000-01 for servicing and repairing the Northern Alliance's Soviet Mi 17 and Mi 35 attack helicopters in Afghanistan when it was engaged in fighting the Taliban militia.

Security and military sources, however, said ARC's limited surveillance capabilities were adversely exposed during the 11-week border war with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir's mountainous Kargil region in 1999 when its output was little better than "pretty pictures ", providing the Indian army and air force with little or no tactical input. Over 1,200 soldiers died in the skirmish, 519 of them Indian.

In the run up to the skirmish, the ARC also proved unable to the task of determining the ingress of the Pakistan Army into Indian territory stretching some 140 km along the Kargil frontier for several weeks before an Indian army detail was informed about the infiltration by a shepherd.

Besides, the military charges ARC with "restricted knowledge" of defence matters, a claim ARC strongly refutes. Security and military sources at times accuse the ARC of operating in a vacuum and producing little of operational value.

ARC's efficacy is further being challenged by the newly-created National Technical Facilities Organisation (NTFO) as part of revamping the country's intelligence structure to conduct hi-tech surveillance using satellite and computer assets besides having access to data collected by the services and other national intelligence sources.

But despite its shortcomings, ARC has had many successes. It played a vital role in the "liberation" of Bangladesh in 1971 and in the takeover of Sikkim four years later as India's 22nd state.

ARC assets were also deployed in providing security to India's highly classified nuclear programme during the 1974 and 1998 underground atomic tests in Pokhran in Rajasthan.

(Thanks to the source for this article also).

 

-- Edited by karatecatman at 18:25, 2006-06-29

Aseem wrote:

---

 what exactly is their mandate? any clue.  And what kind of spying will they do with plane as large as B707. rgds VT-ASJ

---

Well if u know aseemji then the NATO is flying B707s over Germany for same reasons i think krishna posted the article

and the no. of a/c is large not one or two 

More details

PTI

IAF’s ARC aircraft makes emergency landing at IGI

New Delhi, June 29

An Indian Air Force Aviation Research Corp aircraft, carrying 14 passengers, made an emergency landing at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport here this afternoon.

A senior Airport Security official said the Boeing declared emergency at 1232 hrs and landed at 1253 hrs.

He said there were no reports any injuries to the passengers and all the 14, including the crew, were safe.

The official said the third engine of the aircraft, en route to Delhi from Jamnagar, had shut down.

What News on the Phalcon Radar being Fitted at ISI on the IAF IL76s.

regds

MEL