Opinion Lost & not found

It has been a week since the Indian Air Force’s AN-32 transport aircraft went missing on its way from Chennai to Port Blair. Despite extensive efforts by the government, no clue about the missing twin-engine aeroplane has been found so far. Besides ships of the navy and the coast guard, and aeroplanes of the IAF, navy and the coast guard, a submarine of the navy has also been diverted to the area to locate the missing aircraft. Satellites have been pressed into service along with the specialised ships of the Geological Survey of India and the National Institute of Ocean Technology — to little avail. The task of finding a clue, on the surface or inside the water, where the seabed is at a depth of 3,500 metres, is extremely challenging. Moreover, since the Russian-built aircraft dropped off the radar 45 minutes into its three-hour-long scheduled flight, the area of search has been expanded to four-and-half-lakh square kilometres.

Records show that the aircraft did not have any known faults nor was the pilot able to send an emergency signal to the airbase. The AN-32 aircraft may have been inducted into service three decades ago but this particular aeroplane was upgraded only last year. In any case, AN-32 has been a reliable workhorse of the IAF with an excellent safety record. It will perhaps continue to be in service for another two decades, which makes it incumbent to draw the right lessons from this incident.

Advertisement

This incident has raised questions about the adequacy of radar coverage between the Indian mainland and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The radar at Chennai Air Traffic Control picked up the missing aircraft suddenly going down from a height of 23,000 feet only after it replayed the recording four hours later. Beyond preventing the loss of a military aircraft and valuable human lives, it raises concerns about the quality of surveillance over a strategically significant part of India’s maritime space.

China has been asserting itself in India’s neighbourhood, and contesting India in the regional waters. India’s traditional advantage over the Chinese navy has reduced considerably in the last decade, and such incidents can send wrong signals to the Chinese. Modern technological tools are now available to keep India’s maritime space under watch. While the government appears to be sparing no effort to locate the missing aircraft, in the long run it must devote more resources towards actively monitoring India’s strategic maritime space.