New Delhi, July 23: A Heron will fly on the first clear day this week over Maoist-held Abujhmadh, followed by six privately-flown Mi-17s in October.
The skies over Maoist-affected areas in central India will be “covered” by these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that look like herons, the white birds of the grasslands, manufactured in Israel. State police forces, paramilitary forces, the Army and the Air Force would synergise land and sky operations.
For the past two years, Maoists have consolidated their positions especially in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand’s Bastar and Saranda forests respectively. The major handicap for local police and paramilitary forces to move in and engage has been surveillance. In the light of poor intelligence from the ground with informers real and fictitious being brutally killed by Maoists, technical intelligence was the only resort.
Three UAVs procured by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) for surveillance in Naxal areas recently are now ready to be operationalised, sources said. One of them will fly within the week.
“Since we want good real-time imagery these planes will fly low,” said an official. Trials were delayed due to the monsoon and the cloudy weather would compel low flights.
Deployed to fly at up to 30,000 feet altitudes for distances up to 800km to and fro, the Herons would fly at speeds between 80 and 200 knots (a knot equals about 1.85km per hour). They would be equipped with different payloads including electro-optical and thermal surveillance equipment, radars for ground surveillance and day and even night surveillance turrets.
Herons would send back real-time footage from the hills of Bastar or Orissa to the NTRO ground station in Begumpet, Hyderabad, to start with. Operations would be coordinated accordingly.
Last week, painstaking bureaucratic hurdles were crossed by six wet-leased Mi-17s. The contractors have been given 90 days to operationalise their flights while the Centre and state governments are looking at creating adequate heliports across central India.
Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra would have a chopper each for sorties into Maoist heartland.
The use of choppers in the Red corridor has been encouraged by the Centre. Union home minister P. Chidambaram has told states they could use helicopters for security purposes in Maoist-affected areas and the cost would be reimbursed by the Centre.
“However, all of these helicopters will not be gun ships. They will exclusively be used for search, rescue and transportation,” said an official.
The guns would be carried by the soldiers and commandos of the army and paramilitary forces who could slither down in the hitherto inaccessible terrain.
Costing Rs 3.3 lakh an hour, each body-armoured Mi-17 would have night-vision capability and capacity to carry up to 20 soldiers. The private contractors would provide everything from pilots to maintenance services with about a 50 per cent hike in cost to the government over the Air Force. The Air Force charges about Rs 2.1 lakh an hour for Mi-8s and Mi-17s.
Security forces already have six helicopters from the Air Force rented by the different states but even the Air Force is facing a crunch for choppers. The IAF has even recalled its fleet on the UN mission in Congo.
Since the Indian Air Force is falling short of helicopters, the home ministry last year decided to have its own fleet of choppers.
With the army having a battalion at Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh at its manoeuvre range bordering Abujhmadh, these forces may also use services.
