Less than a month after finalising a deal for acquiring Phalcon radars from Israel, India is planning to revive its own AWACS (Airborne Early Warning and Control System) project. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is also ready to testfire the Agni-III missile anytime this year.DRDO Chief Dr V.K. Atre said that defence scientists were not taking any chances to ensure that the tests on Agni-III — a surface-to-surface 3,000 km range ballistic missile — get over without any hitch.As for the AWACS project, he said it would be named the Mini-AWACS system. The organisation had been forced to shelve its earlier early warning radar project in 1999 after an Avro aircraft modified to carry the system crashed, killing all scientists on board. The Rotodome carrying the radar had flown off, indicating a failure of the modification process, he said. In the meantime, India started negotiations for getting the Phalcon system — an Israeli radar — and a Russian platform, the IL-76 aircraft.Atre said they were being very cautious about Agni-III. ‘‘Any failure in the launch would be a great setback to defence scientists,’’ he said.On the recent tests of the upgraded version of Prithvi II, he said the missiles were test-fired successfully using an indigenous global positioning system for greater accuracy.Another DRDO project, the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas, was on schedule and its fifth technology demonstrator prototype would soon start tests flights, he said.Moreover, Atre said that India was seeking US help in developing the Indian jawan into a futuristic soldier armed with miniaturised remote monitoring, GPS systems, advanced communication gadgets and weapons platforms.‘‘The US has been working on what is called a Land Warrior System in which a soldier is equipped with sophisticated gadgetry, making him capable of operating independently, yet keeping him in touch with others,’’ Atre said. This concept, he said, was handy in low intensity conflicts.The DRDO chief said this was the outcome of the recent meeting of the Indo-US Joint Technical Group in which India had agreed to provide assistance to the US on environmental studies carried out in making soldiers fight more effectively in extreme weather conditions. The two countries had also agreed to cooperate in development of vaccines for biological warfare, he said.
