Bidar, Feb. 23: The Indian Air Force will shortly order an additional 40 Hawk advanced jet trainer aircraft to be based in Kalaikunda, Bengal, where a new base to train its fighter pilots is to be set up.

Kalaikunda is likely to be the second base after this north Karnataka town that will groom a new generation of fighter pilots beyond the era of Soviet-origin MiG-21 aircraft that have been the air force’s mainstay despite being outdated.

Bidar, the erstwhile aerodrome of the Nizam of Hyderabad in the undulating Deccan, offers a glimpse into what a new airbase for the Hawks, built with help from the UK Royal Air Force and British Aerospace, can mean.

With the setting up of HOTS — the Hawk Operational Training Squadron for which the first of the aircraft were inducted this morning — Bidar’s airbase has been transformed in just two years into a slick and spanking establishment with two new hangars and, in a first for the IAF, sunshades for its aircraft when they are parked on the tarmac.

The hangar is brightly lit and, on Day One of the Hawks being inducted at least, the greasiness that would normally be associated with such an establishment was missing.

In addition, the IAF has spent about Rs 120 crore in building ground control and air control centres complete with laboratories. Bidar is known as the home base of the Suryakirans — the formation-flying squadron of the IAF — but it is HOTS that pitchforks it into greater prominence than ever before.

Kalaikunda, the Second World War base in Bengal’s Midnapore district, has already been put through an upgrade to host international wargames.

With the air force planning to buy more Hawks and to set up more HOTS in Kalaikunda, the sleepy Midnapore town is set to become a showpiece establishment. Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major actually said he would like the Hawks to be based in Kalaikunda, though a decision has yet to be formalised.

The announcement by defence minister A.K. Antony that India would buy 40 additional Hawk Mark 132 aircraft came just after the first of the aircraft were inducted into the force today.