IAF guns will boom in the desert on Monday

With the PM in attendance, a wide range of aerial platforms on display will strongly underline India’s access to various technologies and cordial relationships with countries that rivals each other, writes ETV Bharat's senior journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah.

New Delhi: The once-in-a-three year grand spectacle of fire and power staged in the desert sands of Pokhran is an apt metaphor to describe and showcase the growing Indian might in the skies. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will witness from the grandstand the firepower demonstration of the world’s fourth-largest air force that operates in an air space spanning a mind-boggling 40 million cubic km.

With targets laid out across a swath of the desert stretch of 1.5 to 3 km in a 120-degree sweep, the various aerial platforms of the IAF will blow to smithereens ammo dumps, tank convoys, bridges, vehicles and other conventional targets including aerial ones. In total, there will be 150 aerial assets including 109 fighters, 24 helicopters, and 7 transporters among other platforms that will be flying in from seven IAF bases across the country to the Pokhran desert in Rajasthan.

In keeping with the stated Indian goal of trying to broad-basing its buys, the air fighters will include a sound barrier-breaking French-origin Rafale, the French-origin Mirage 2000, the indigenous LCA Tejas, the Russian Mig 29 and Sukhoi 30 not to speak of old warhorses like the Jaguar and the Mig 21. The exercise will also include demonstrations by air defence systems like the Spyder and the home-grown Akash missile system which will pulverize aerial targets.

The platforms will include airlift missions by transporters like the C-17 ‘Globemaster’ and assault landings by the C-130J ‘Hercules’. The Chinook helicopter will display its superb value especially in the high mountains by carrying a M-777 howitzer in an ‘underslung’ operation. The show will demonstrate the ‘Apache’ attack helicopter with its Hellfire missile, the Mi-35 with its 80mm rockets, and the indigenous light combat helicopter with its 70 mm rockets and the light helicopter with 20 mm front guns.

The demonstration will feature several new platforms that define cutting-edge military aviation technology but what would be the underlying highlight is the stacking up of a diverse range of platforms from the Russian to the American to the French.