Indian Sukhoi-30MKI Fighters Have No Protective Shelters; Parliamentary Report

The Parliamentary Committee on Defense in a recent report has asked the ministry of defense to speed up the process of setting up hardened aircraft shelters for the Indian Air Force frontline combat aircraft, Sukhoi-30MKI, Indian Express reported Tuesday.

“The committee is concerned to find that our Air Force, which is already short of planes and worse than that hardened shelters for the existing limited number of aircrafts are not available,” the report submitted in the parliament recently said.

“It is a much bigger aircraft. Therefore some New Generation Hardened Aircraft Shelter (NGHAS) has to be made in which not only a SU-30 can fit but also servicing, loading of weapons and maintenance activities can be done inside the shelter,” Indian Air Force had informed the committee.

The MoD representatives in an answer to the concerns raised by the standing committee regarding the NGHAS said, “NGHAS is a large project and it costs thousands of Crore of rupees, NGHAS are specialized structures and are designed to save a Sukhoi-30 MKI aircraft from direct hit of 2000 lbs bomb.”

The committee headed by Major General BC Khanduri (retd) said that, it is extremely pertinent that no damage is caused to the available aircraft. It also said that while the New Generation Hardened Aircraft Shelter (NGHAS) project is conceptualized for this purpose, nevertheless, the committee desired that there should not be any delay in execution; as such delays have become a common feature of all the projects.