TMCnet News
IAF plan to link civilian, defence radars takes off(Times of India, The Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dec. 21--NEW DELHI -- After an excruciating 10-year delay, the critical requirement for the country to have a fully-automated network to integrate the wide array of military radars with each other as well as with civilian radars is finally making some progress now. The first of the five nodes of IACCS (integrated air command and control system) will be operational in the western sector facing Pakistan by early-2009, said defence ministry sources on Friday. IAF, in fact, wants 10 IACCS nodes to cover the entire country but the government has approved only five so far. IAF had moved the IACCS case as far back as December 1998 since Indian airspace is far from impregnable. But government apathy hampered its timely implementation. Something like IACCS becomes even more crucial today in light of intelligence reports holding that terror could strike through the aerial route after the maritime one. As earlier reported by TOI, India's air defence coverage has several gaping holes, especially over central and peninsular India, which can be exploited by "hostile" aircraft quite easily. At present, command and control of air defence operations is exercised manually from ADDCs (air defence directional centres) located in different sectors. The automated IACCS, once it comes up, will enable quick transfer of data from low-level transportable radars (LLTRs), high-power static radars and medium-power radars as well as ground stations of AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) and aerostat radars to one central place. With multi-sensor tracking and data fusion ensuring "a filtered and composite real-time air situation picture" at one central place, air defence operations will be much swifter. To see more of The Times of India, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com Copyright (c) 2008, The Times of India Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |