The Indian Air Force, in coordination with the Navy and Army, has launched a massive search and rescue (SAR) operation for its missing AN-32 aircraft. However, intermittent pre-monsoon rains in the thickly forested area are turning out to be a big handicap for the air and ground operation. The Indian Navy's P-8i long range reconnaissance aircraft has been deployed alongwith two Mi-17 helicopters, C-130 aircraft, two advanced light helicopters in addition to the ground teams from Army and ITBP.
The IAF AN-32 transport aircraft with 13 personnel went missing over Arunachal Pradesh on Monday. The aircraft got airborne from Jorhat in Assam at 1227hours for Mechuka Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) in Arunachal Pradesh but lost contact around 1300hours.
The IAF has a fleet of over 100 AN-32 aircrafts, which were inducted in 1984 but nearly a dozen have been lost in crashes. Before Monday's incident, the Soviet era transport aircraft was involved in 13 crashes including three major crashes. In 1999, 21 people were killed in a crash in Delhi, while in 2009, 13 onboard were killed in Mechuka and 29 lost their lives in July 2016 when the aircraft disappeared over Bay of Bengal.
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After the 2009 crash, India signed a major upgrade and life extension programme for its entire fleet of AN-32 at a cost of $400 million. But until today, only half of the fleet has been upgraded due to unavailability of spares. As per the project, 40 were to be upgraded in Ukraine and the rest of the fleet were to be upgraded at IAF's Kanpur based repair depot. But due to bitter relations with Moscow, Kiev halted the upgrade programme for many years. However, officials claim that the spares issues have been resolved.
Meanwhile, the IAF has also been looking for a replacement for the ageing fleet. The Tata-Airbus joint venture to manufacture C-295 transport aircrafts, which will replace the Avro fleet of IAF, is also expected to manufacture additional aircrafts to replace the AN-32 fleet as well.
An official, who is privy to the rescue operation told THE WEEK that the search is currently focussed around Along, Payum and Tat0 areas of Arunachal Pradesh, close to the border with China.
“The search aircrafts are assigned paths over the probable area to scan. Any lead/echo is then verified by helicopter/ground teams to confirm. AN-32 has Emergency Locator Transmitter but it is activated only on impact of certain level of pressure. It also needs Line of Sight for it be be detected, which means search aircraft should pass over it to pick up signals," an officer said.
Indian Navy's P-8i is enroute to the location to join the search operations, which has Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), IR and Electro Optic modes to scan the thickly forested landscape.
“Long Range Maritime Reconnaissance aircraft P-8i took off from INS Rajali, Arakonam in Tamil Nadu at 1300hours and is heading to joining the search and rescue (SAR) operation launched to locate the missing AN-32 between Jorhat and Mechuka. The aircraft will reach the area shortly,” Navy spokesperson Captain D.K. Sharma said.
