Indian Army and Air force's Rescue Mission - Sikkim.

A woman along with her child, rescued by the Army alights from an Indian Army chopper at the Mangan helipad Dhruv. 

More than 3,000 people were rescued in quake-hit areas of Sikkim by defence forces which scrambled hard to clear debris of collapsed structures and landslides.

IAF has airlifted more than 500 troops to Sikkim, including the medical and engineering teams and is conducting sorties of heavy lift transport aircraft and choppers from Delhi, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Bagdogra to ferry troops and ensure supply of medicines and food.

There are eight to 13 helicopters which have been pressed into service in conjunction with the Air Force. 35 heavy engineering plant equipments have been deployed to restore roads and communication lines.

The Army and Airforce are working day and night to rescue people.

Here are the few snaps...

NDRF personnel wait to board an IAF C-130 bound for Sikkim after the Earthquake hours 
earlier

An Army contingent taking notes from the villagers at Manul village to reach the remote villages of North Sikkim, the epicentre of the earthquake.

                   Army in rescue operation.

Air Force Mi-17 crashes in Tawang, all 12 on board dead

Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh:  An Indian Air Force Mi-17 helicopter crashed near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, killing all 12 people on board.

The helicopter had 11 Air Force personnel, including the crew, and one Army officer on board. It had taken off from Tawang for Guwahati, and crashed about five minutes later at a place called Bomdir.

All bodies have been recovered and a court of enquiry has been ordered.

RIP all those who died :(

In the memory of Amar Senani Jatindra Nath Das popularly known as Jatin Das.........on the occasion of his B'day on 27/10/2010.

‘Free India’ was a dream of all Indians under the British rule. Everyone during that rule fought in some way or the other with a common aim of ending British and other colonial authorities in India. After a century of revolutions, struggle, blood shedding, battles and sacrifices, India finally achieved independence on August 15,1947. India was free in 1947 from the British Empire but the country lost many men and women who were filled with undaunted courage and spirit of patriotism. Today, they are known as freedom fighters because they sacrificed their lives for their motherland. Indian freedom fighters with their true spirit and undaunted courage had faced various tortures, exploitations and hardships to earn us freedom.

The pioneers of the freedom movement were Bhagat singh, Batukeshwar Dutt, Ashfaqullah khan, Chandrasekhar Azad, Khudiram Bose, Rajguru, Sukhdev and so on.......but along with the glory and majesty of these immortal sons of India also exist the name of one of the great son of mother India who was born on 27 October 1904 in Kolkata, who made the supreme sacrifice for sake of our nation in Lahore jail after 63 days of hunger strike, Jatin Das was an Indian freedom fighter and revolutionary initially linked with a revolutionary group named Anusilhan Smilti in the begining of his revolutionary life.  He was a fellow comrade along with Bhagat Singh, he came in contact with revolutionaries from other parts of India and Bhagat Singh convinced him for bomb making to be used in an explosion in the Central Legislative Assembly. After this mission was successfully accomplished by his comrades Jatin Das along with other revolutionaries was arrested for revolutionary activities and was imprisoned in Lahore jail to be tried under the supplementary Lahore Conspiracy Case, In the Lahore jail, Jatin Das started a hunger strike  along with other revolutionary fighters, demanding equality for Indian prisoners and undertrials, this  hunger strike started on 13 July 1929 and ended on 13 September 1929 when Jatin Das made his supreme sacrifice......which lasted for 63 days the jail authority took many measures to forcibly feed Jatin Das and the other freedom fighters, beat them and did not even provide them with drinking water<span> </span> However, Jatindra did not eat he achieved martyrdom and the hunger strike remained unbroken till date........

 63 days of hunger strike shocked the whole of India, the whole country gave him an ovation which few men in our recent history have received. As his body was carried from Lahore to Kolkata by train, thousands and thousnads of people rushed to every station to pay their homage to the martyr. A two-mile long procession in Kolkata carried the coffin to the cremation ground. The hunger strike of Jatin Das in prison was one crucial moment in the resistance against illegal detention.

After his maryrdom it was very rightly quoted by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, “As the days rolled by, one by one the hunger-strikers dropped off, but young Jatin was invincible. He never hesitated, never faltered for one small second but marched straight on towards death and freedom”

Today is the b’day of this great son of India so by  paying our most sincere tributes to him from the deepest core of our heart and soul lets cherish this day with the full spirit of Inquilab and also it my solemn appeal to all the readers of this article that let every Indian know who was JATIN DAS........... he is our pride and he still resides in the heart of every Indian .....…JATIN DAS AMAR RAHE!

AIR FORCE DAY: IAF Warbirds Against A Foggy Sky

Pictures from IAF Day !

Indian AWACS, RAF Eurofighters at Exercise Indradhanush This Month!

Indo-UK Air Force Exercise Indradhanush will take place at Air Force Station Kalaikunda, in West Midinapur district, West Bengal from 18 Oct 2010 till 03 Nov 2010.

This would be for the first time when RAF (Royal Air Force) Typhoons would be seen in a joint operational scenario in India. The IAF would be participating in this exercise with the Su-30 MKI, Mirage-2000, MiG-27 and Phalcon AWACS. The RAF would also be deploying its E-3D AWACS and VC-10 mid-air refuellers.

During Ex-Indradhanush, specific emphasis will be on exposing more IAF aircrew and controllers to missions like Large Force Engagements, and protection of High Value Aerial Assets -- roles routinely undertaken by RAF as part of coalition/expeditionary force deployment around the globe. It will be for the first time that IAF AWACS will participate in a joint AF exercise.

IAF to receive modernised planes from Ukraine under 600 Mn $ deal

 The Indian Air Force will receive two modernised An-32 light transport planes built by Ukraine this month under a $600 million deal, the biggest bilateral agreement between the two countries. The planes which were modernised by Ukraine's Antonov state enterprise under the Ukrainian-Indian 
contract for repairs will be delivered to India in October, Antonov's President and Director-General Dmitry Kiva was quoted as saying by Russian newsagency Itar-Tass yesterday.

According to Kiva, the planes were modernised under the Ukranian-Indian contract for repairs, modernisation and extension of service life of 105 An-32 planes up to 40 years.

It is the biggest deal in the entire history of the Ukrainian-Indian relations as the sum of the contract signed in June 2009 stands at USD 600 million.

First five An-32 planes were delivered to Kiev in March 2010, followed by five more planes in June.

The first two planes were completely modernised in July, another one in September.

According to Kiva, the market capacity for the new An-32 is estimated at 45 planes.

The Antonov Kiev-based plant plans to manufacture seven An-32 planes till the year 2015, including three in 2010, three in 2011, and one in 2012.

One An-32 planes has already been manufactures, and the other two will be made till the year end, as provided in the production plan.

India takes first steps towards own regional aircraft

India’s very own Regional Transport Aircraft, or RTA, is taking shape. This is notwithstanding the criticism heaped on the indigenous small passenger aircraft programmes like Saras and Hansa.

An RTA is said to be more suitable for a place like India where within a radius of 300-400 km of a big city you have another one.

The Rs 3,000-4,000 crore project was set-in motion a month earlier by the Defense Research and Development Organisation. National Aeronautics Limited is the nodal agency for the design of the aircraft. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is expected to produce it.

The project is expected to give a shot in the arm to the aviation sector in the country. RTA is more suitable to reach places within a 500-km radius. The aircraft would have a range of 600 km to 800 km. HAL and the NAL have not decided on many aspects of the aircraft such as work share, funding and even whether the aircraft will have a turbo-prop or turbo jet engine. NAL had held discussions with Pratt & Whitney (Canada) and General Electric (US) for an engine.

Quest Global, the outsourced manufacturing company, is now in the design team for RTA. It hopes to be involved in the manufacturing too.

“It is the point-to-point connecting ability of RTAs that could make it popular today, and could hold sway in future too,” said Aravind Melligeri, Chairman & Co-founder of Quest Global. The hub-and-spoke model is not favoured by many who do not want to get on or off aircrafts to reach their destination.

About 400 of these regional jets are expected to be manufactured. Of these, 200 will go to the armed forces

Russians and Chinese too are right in front in developing the aircraft. Sukhoi Superjet-100 of Russia and the ARJ21 regional jet is being developed in China, by the AVIC-I Commercial Aircraft Company (ACAC), based in Shanghai, which is a consortium of six companies and aerospace research institutes carrying out the development and manufacture of the aircraft. But, warn experts, unlike the LCA programme, it should stick to the timeline set.

Technologies required would include a laminar flow wing, hydrophobic coatings, use of low cost composites, fly-by-wire controls, advanced avionics that will enable the use of ill-equipped airfields, integrated vehicle health monitoring among others, said an NAL source.

In August 2008 former President A P J Abdul Kalam said India can produce small passenger jets by 2020. For this, India needs to make optimum use of its technology in the aerospace sector.