Bangalore, May 9: The Defence Research and Development Organisation has decided to relaunch its indigenous air-borne early warning or AEW project, regarded as an “eye in the sky” for its early detection of enemy fighter jets, using aircraft manufactured in Brazil.

A team of directors of various DRDO units will fly to Brazil later this month for negotiations on the Embraer 145 aircraft.

Three of these aircraft would be acquired for the AEW project, which was put on the back burner following the crash of the sole technology demonstrator in January 1999, near the naval base INS Rajali in Arakkonam, Tamil Nadu. These Brazilian aircraft will be fitted with a state-of-the-art phased array radar developed by the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment in DRDO. “This project will be implemented (price of three aircraft and the radars) at Rs 1,700 crore and in a three-year time frame. We are leaving at the end of the month for discussions with Embraer,” a top DRDO source said.

This team would be led by K.U. Limaye, the director of Electronics and Radar Development Establishment, and K. Tamil Mani, the director of Centre for Airborne Systems. The centre was set up in early 1980s to design and build an AEW system for the air force.

The source said: “We will revive the programme by mounting the airborne radar on a smaller aircraft with a surveillance range of 200 km. Unlike the rotating dome-shaped antenna in the airborne surveillance platform that was mounted on an Avro aircraft, the electronic phased array radar will be installed on the Embraer 145 jet.”

Sources said the organisation took a decision to revive the project in view of the astronomical sum of $ 1.1 billion to be paid to Israel for the three Phalcon airborne early warning and control aircraft (priced at about $ 100 million). The Phalcon craft would be flown to Russia for three Ilyshuin IL-76 transport aircraft on which the Phalcon systems would be mounted. Besides, the expertise gained in the past would be utilised to roll out an indigenous AEW system. “We will use signal processing devices, sub-systems and expertise gained in the previous project,” the source added.

In combat, these AEWs function as “force multipliers” that enhance the capability of fighter jets through an early warning on every attribute of the enemy aircraft. The AEWs could also function as the air-based command and control centre, overcoming the limitations of directing air operations from the ground.

The DRDO was on course vis-a-vis the indigenous AEW project, but it was removed from the priority list for its budget soon after the crash. The organisation had set out to build the advanced system for Rs 200 crore. An early warning system with such capabilities, like the E2-C Hawkeye of the US, would cost about Rs 2,000 crore.

The top echelons in the IAF had described the AEW as “the flying chapati” because of the saucer-shaped rotating radar fitted on the Avro aircraft. A week before the crash (eight DRDO engineers on board perished), this aircraft had demonstrated an effective range of 300 km (detected fighters flying at 1.5 times the speed of sound) on land and over the Bay of Bengal.

The sources said only a select league of countries has designed and flown their own AEW aircraft. However, India has joined four Asian nations — China, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan — to order AEW aircraft after signing the $ 1.1-billion contract with Israel.