Flying Saviours

Aditya Kakkar

It is through air maintenance that the Indian Air Force (IAF) sustains the Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel deployed in the entire northern region, Siachen and Sub-Sector North (SSN) where Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) is located.

BUILT TO LAST IL-76MD

Since the infrastructure in this entire region ranges from poor to non-existent, all requirements of the personnel from rations to clothing and equipment is met by air effort. In SSN, where the terrain is more hostile than Siachen because of the sheer altitude and precipices, substantial troop movement also happens through the air effort. And when the weather turns hostile, then the IAF is called upon to pitch in to support the local people as well.

The heart of this well-oiled air maintenance machinery is air force station Chandigarh which is home to three squadrons operating fixed-wing aircraft like IL-76s and AN-32s and the Mi-26 helicopters. The air maintenance exercise is carried out in two parts. The first involves delivering the loads to Leh and Thoise through IL-76s and AN-32s. The second part involves delivery of these loads through helicopters to various posts on the Siachen glacier and SSN.

While IL-76, with the load carrying capacity of 25 to 30 tonne can only land at Leh and Thoise, AN-32, with the capacity of 4.2 to 5 tonne can also land at Kargil apart from advanced landing grounds like DBO, Nyoma and Fukche. Coming down to 1,000ft, AN-32 drops rations, kerosene oil, ammunition, newspapers and often haystack too (for mules which operate as animal transport) in pallets of 800kg. Always a versatile platform, which has rightfully earned the sobriquet of IAF’s workhorse, AN-32s have been undergoing upgradation since 2009 and the first of the upgraded lot has been put into service in Chandigarh, adding to the clockwork precision of air maintenance.

The flipside of this versatility is that AN-32 needs better environment, read climactic cond