Mid-air refuellers add to India’s economic clout
Auberon i know what point you are trying to make(distance) but that point will remain a mystery only for our enemies to find out. To me this plane is for China specifically and it adds another possible delivery vehicle to our arsenal and the more i read about it the more i love it, even without mid air refueing we would still access south china sea.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Mid-air-refuellers-add-to-India%92s-economic-clout/315965
Mid-air refuellers add to India’s economic clout
Vinod Mathew Posted: May 29, 2008 at 0052 hrs IST
Pune, May 28: With IAF’s latest acquisition, the IL-78 M mid-air refuellers, fully operational, New Delhi deep-penetration air strike capability has crossed the range of its Agni strategic missile. Multi-role Sukhoi 30 MKI fighters can now fly non-stop for nine hours and target 5,400 kilometers away from Indian territory. This is a step towards New Delhi acquiring the promised strategic capability as the first PHALCON AWACS (airborne early warning system) is to be inducted into IAF later this year from Israel.
But the IAF would rather downplay this important milestone as it feels that India’s strategic reach capability is not merely about how far into the enemy territory our Su MKI 30s, Mirages and Jaguars with nuke-weapon carrying capability can reach. Just as there is no denying the military advantage of strategising how deep into, say, Chinese mainland our fighter aircraft can fly by hugging the international waters for air-to-air refueling, it is also about finding out how best to deploy this primary advantage during peacetime.
“The benefits from our A-2-A refuelling capability should be viewed as much from the economic perspective as from a military one. With growing importance of the Indian Ocean due to its sizeable maritime hydrocarbon traffic and the country’s growing stature as a global economic power, our deep reach capability has many ramifications. Consider, for instance, busy shipping channels like the Strait of Hormuz, Malaccan Straits or the Sunda Bay where in the conceivable future we could have interests and the acquired capability gives us a definite edge,” Air Commodore K.P. Nair, commandant of the Lohegaon airbase that is home to a good percentage of Sukhoi-30 MKIs (the other being Bareilly), told The Indian Express.
Giving credence to this theory, one route that is presently frequented from the Pune airbase is to the Car Nicobar base in Andamans, which is merely 45 miles from Banda Aceh, an Indonesian island.
Nair said his squadron had already raised the benchmark for such sorties to over six hours. At an average flying speed of 900 km an hour, this means these sorties are doing up to 5,400 km, perhaps more. Having flown to a number of European destinations and even across the Atlantic, the Indian A-2-A refueling capability has already achieved a global reach, he said. The Indian government’s decision to go for a two-seater fighter was to keep each other company at the time radio silence is on.
The Sukhois can be airborne for a maximum of nine hours at one go, with refuelling. This is borne in mind when planning the rendezvous with the IL-78s. As one IL-78 allows only three simultaneous plug-ons, the number of aircraft used in the sorties is decided by the availability of the refuellers,” Nair said.
At another level, the deep reach capability is also about having more options to locate our resources in ‘depth airfields’ such as Bangalore and Thiruvananthapuram, far removed from the critical borders, he said. “This takes on crucial significance as we keep adding more Sukhois to the existing fleet,” he said.
Meanwhile, flying the fighter aircraft in and out of Pune and across the civilian space is not difficult as the flight routes are filed a day in advance with the civil aviation authorities, Nair said. “We fly as much by night though it requires better skills. Also, we have kept a daily low-flying window of 8 a.m. to 10 30 a.m. during which time there are no civilian flights at the Pune airport,” he said.
