Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Aug 10: The Indian Air Force (IAF) has formulated a rare strategic plan to use stretches of National Highways, mostly falling in the border States, as “emergency landing strips” to meet with any kind of situation including the terror attacks to rush enforcements to particular spots without any delay.
“The emergency landing strips on the National Highways could also prove useful in case of hostilities with neighbours and, once developed, they can be used for multiple purposes though the immediate aim of their construction was to rush reinforcement to counter terror attacks,” official sources told the Excelsior.
They said the IAF has already carried out experiments for using stretches of the National Highways and Expressways for landing purposes of choppers. The experiments were successful, they added.
“Following success of the experiments, the Indian Air Forces has now sent generic plan for utilization of National Highways as landing strips during eventualities by the IAF to the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways headed by Nitin Gadkari, which controls all National Highways and Expressways in the country,” sources said.
To test the conversion of National Highway stretches into “emergency landing strips”, the Indian Air Force had carried out the landing of Mirage 2000 aircraft on the Yamuna Expressway and the landing was successful.
The successful landing, sources said, has boosted the efforts of the IAF to convert National Highway and Expressway stretches into the landing strips, which would help rush reinforcement of troops, commandos and Special Forces to any place across the country to finish off terrorist attack at the earliest.
“Presently, the IAF had to search for proper and safe landing for dropping the Special Forces to tackle the terror attacks but since the entire country was now linked/being linked with National Highways, it would become easy for the Air Force to drop the troops within no time in case of any eventualities,” they said, adding that the landing of choppers on the Highways and Expressways wouldn’t only be useful during the terrorist attacks but also in case of any kind of hostilities with the neighbours.
Noting that the new plan mooted by the Indian Air Force could prove very useful, sources said the proposal for using all National Highways and Expressways especially those falling in the border areas or the State vulnerable to terrorist attacks, would be used for developing “emergency landing strips” initially once the proposal was cleared by the Ministry of Surface Transport and Highways.
Sources felt that going by the strategic nature of the Indian Air Force plan, the Surface Transport and Highways Ministry was not going to have any objections and could clear the proposal, resulting into conversion of Highway and Expressway stretches into the “emergency landing strips”.
Sources pointed out that construction of “emergency landing strips” would, in no way, affect movement of traffic either on the National Highways or the Expressways as only the Highway and Expressway stripe would be utilized for the IAF for construction purposes. Traffic on the Highways or Expressways would be stopped only when the IAF had to make emergency landing of their choppers in case of any eventuality.
Asserting that very few developed countries have such facilities (of emergency landing of choppers on Highways and Expressways strips), sources said India was going to achieve this feat, which would give it great advantage not only in effectively meeting with the challenge of terrorism but also prove useful during hostilities with the neighbours.
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