INDIA GETS ITS OWN "AIRFORCE ONE"

Soon, very soon, in fact in June itself, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will get a plush new office, thousands of feet up in the sky. It might not exactly be as high-tech as George W Bush's "Air Force One" or the "Flying Oval Office" but it will be somewhere there.

The first of three wide-bodied VVIP Boeing Business Jets, ordered in October 2005 at a total cost of Rs 937 crore, will touch down at Palam to join IAF's elite Communication Squadron, tasked with ferrying VVIPs, in the second half of June.

"After that, the second and third VVIP jets will come after a gap of three months each. Three sets of IAF air crew (with two pilots, a navigator and a flight engineer in each) have already been trained in Seattle and Texas to fly them," said an official.

Moreover, over 100 ground technicians are also undergoing training in batches in US to handle these specially-configured planes, which come with sophisticated self-protection suites (SPS), encrypted communication facilities and state-of-the-art navigation aids.

The PM, of course, will have a full-fledged executive office and bedroom to himself, apart from a secure communication chamber and facilities to host around 50 guests in the highly-customised aircraft.

While the three VVIP jets in themselves come for Rs 734 crore, another Rs 202.93 crore has been spent on equipping them with SPS to take care of hostile missiles and other threats.

Ordered directly through the US government, the SPS will include 'radar warning receivers' to alert the plane that a hostile radar has 'painted' it and a missile may be on the way.

Then, of course, the aircraft will have 'missile-approach warning systems' and 'counter-measure dispensing systems'.

This will help the planes take automated evasive action by shooting metal chaff to "fool" radar-guided missiles or flares to throw heat-seeking missiles off the track. There will also be enough advanced electronic counter-measures on board to jam hostile radars.
The American Air Force One, of course, has all this and much more "hush-hush" stuff.

It can even function as an effective military operations centre, with direct links to Pentagon and other establishments, during nuclear, chemical or biological attacks by adversaries. The Indian version of the American Air Force One is obviously a slightly poorer one.

For instance, unlike the Air Force One, which can fly halfway around the world without refuelling, the range of the Indian version is limited to 3,000 nautical miles.

This had come in for some sharp criticism in the latest Comptroller and Auditor General report, which had slammed the UPA for the VVIP jets’ deal since it "deviated from laid-down procedures and well-recognised norms of propriety".

The CAG held that despite spending Rs 937 crore, the new aircraft would not be able to fly VVIPs non-stop to international locations like London due to their limited range, "necessitating continued use of Air India aircraft with all its adverse consequences