LAC airbases to be upgraded

Build-up on Indian side will include modernising 70-80 facilities

India will expand and modernise around 70 to 80 airbases and airstrips for landing fighter and transport jets as well as large choppers along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and  Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir.

The strategic build-up on the Indian side is to match the highly rated Chinese infrastructure facilities for the operational movements and lifting of goods. According to top Home Ministry sources, it will take between three and eight years “to match” Chinese facilities on the other side of the LAC. The airbases on the Indian side of the LAC have currently facilities for landing small helicopters like Chetak, Cheeta and Dhruv but they are inadequate for bigger helicopters with “higher lifting capacity” of over three tonnes or so.

Well-placed sources told Deccan Herald that around 70 to 80 smaller and existing airbases would be “expanded” to accommodate choppers like Mi-17 twin-turbine transport helicopter.

Expansion plan

The small airbases at high altitudes are about 50 feet by 50 feet which would be doubled “in the strategic expansion plan.” In the hilly terrain, high walls will come up around the “new bases”.

Similarly airstrips at “very high altitude” will be modernised and made operational round-the-year with new strategic “pukka” roads and arteries to back up (the army and para-military forces deployed ) along the high-altitude and inhospitable border posts.

Arunachal Pradesh bases like Kimine and Zero supply point, in Ladakh Denchok and DBO and in Uttarakhand expanded landing facilities will be created at Rimkhim, Lapthal and Milan, close to Tibet border.

They said some of the airbases along the China borders close to Gunji and the Neelam valley provide “natural grounds” for good helipads in advanced areas.

The airstrips for aircraft are to be modernised and expanded at Fukche, Numua and DBO in Ladakh , Gauchar and Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand and Menchuka in Arunachal Pradesh.
“After the 1962 war some of the airstrips in the forward areas in Ladakh became inoperational and were closed down and remained kachcha. In Uttarakhand airstrips were semi-operational, Now ,these  would be expanded, moder­nised and made fully operational for all kinds of logistic support,” sources said.

Land  is being developed  for aircraft to give them sufficient  turning space and safe runway.

In the North-East airstrips like “Lilabari” airport in Assam is for long fully operational for civil as well as other operations.

Roads on the Indian side of the LAC are being redone so that troops and supplies could be reached faster to the farthest Border Out Posts (BOPs), sources said. The “old time practice of  carrying of goods on the back is being altogether eliminated by two-phase development of roads on our side  giving quick access to the last BOP on the Chinese borders.”

The first phase is expected to conclude by 2015 with main roads in place and thereafterarterial  roads will be laid to feed the last man on the inhospitable Chinese border.

Twenty-seven Strategic roads located in ”very high altitude”, totalling 804 km along the LAC in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, are being constructed on a priority basis by the Ministry of Home Affairs for operational  purposes.

Sources said strategic  roads along the LAC have already come up at several strategic points. “The roads on the Chinese are very good with townships having sprung up alongside,” they said. Border points like Ganchok have water, electricity and inhabited houses.

China has developed a modern airport in Lhasa at 14,000 feet, put in place train and “pukka” roads on their side “to complete the chain” for logistic support in case of a conflict, the sources said. Chinese activities on the LAC have currently come to a zero level due to snow fall. Active movement could be noticed only after May, sources said.