Military sets sights on tsunami-proof bases

Port Blair, Jan. 8: After getting emergency relief work off the ground in Andaman and Nicobar, the military has begun to plan ahead to reconstruct its tsunami-destroyed facilities and create new ones.

A six-member team from the three components of the armed forces is here, visiting all affected areas with the objective of rebuilding the bases in a manner that can stand up to tsunamis.

“We will be looking at Japanese technology because they are used to tsunamis and their installations are strong enough to withstand tsunamis, which can also be triggered by a small earthquake (6.6 on the Richter scale) in the ocean bed. Our reconstruction work will be stronger than before,” Commodore V.K. Bhansali, part of the elite team, said.

The armed forces plan to set up new bases in Port Blair and Diglipur, both in the northern part of the islands, to thwart possible military incursions and conduct major defence reconstruction work.

To start with, at the air base in Diglipur, the length of the runaway will be increased to 6,000 feet from 3,500. Two new defence installations are likely to come up at Pahargaon and Calicut near Port Blair.

“We have chosen about 20 acres of land in Pahargaon and 45 acres in Calicut. Once the land is ready, the armed forces will be in a better situation to deal with any eventuality, be it war with the enemy or the present war we are waging against nature,” Kumar said.

Plans are also afoot to build a strategic “operation readiness platform” in Port Blair, where a pilot will take only three minutes to get on the aircraft and be airborne once the bell rings.

About 3,000 feet of the 9,000-ft runaway on Car Nicobar island has been destroyed by the tsunami.

Land is being acquired on the west coast of Car Nicobar and a complete overhauling will be undertaken in Campbell Bay to strengthen the forward operating posts (military supplies depot) on the only inhabited island in the south.

“In terms of strategic defence installations, the Car Nicobar air base assumes great significance. So does the forward operating base in Campbell Bay, which has been badly affected. We will rebuild them shortly,” Kumar said.

For possible box Planned expansions Diglipur air base runaway from 3,500 to 6,000 ft. Car Nicobar air base on higher west coast landProtect Campbell Bay base with Japanese technology.

Date set for India tsunami system

Science and Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal said today, India’s tsunami warning system will be operational in two to three years’ time.

The 27 million dollars system will give the speed of a tsunami and the regions most at risk, reports the BBC.

Speaking here, Sibal said the warning system would involve installing Deep Ocean Assessment Reporting Technology at a depth of six kilometres.

IL-78 MKI at Car Nicobar.

Image Credits : India Today via Jagan

Some information regarding serial numbers of various planes in the Indian contingent deployed for Cooperative Cope Thunder 2004 can be found here.

India’s navy helps Sri Lanka

INDIAN naval Captain T K Ashokan was at sea during exercises on December 26. On that fatal day he noticed a sudden swell in the sea but days later he experienced first hand the full devastation caused by the tsunami. The INS Sarvekshak dropped anchor outside Sri Lanka’s debris-strewn Galle harbour five days later.

Captain Ashokan and his crew had an urgent mission: to clean up the harbour, allowing relief to reach the survivors of the country’s worst-ever natural disaster. “Before we even reached here, we saw a few sunken boats right out in the middle of the sea,” Captain Ashokan said of the damage wrought by the killer tsunami.

The Sarvekshak, a ship that specialises in hydrography or the mapping of the ocean floor, drew into Galle in the dead of night, but lighthouses usually ablaze with light along the ravaged coast were snuffed out.

The immediate mission of the 218 officers and sailors on board, along with 82 army personnel, was to clear the harbour to allow the ships carrying a flood of international aid arriving here to safely dock, the captain said.

An emblem of the monumental effort this took over the following three days sits right on the pier where Ashokan’s ship is now docked: a massive dredger that the tsunami wave heaved up and gently placed down, undamaged.

Using its cutting-edge surveying equipment, the three-year-old Sarvekshak’s first task was to map out where boats, buses and other sizeable objects had been hurled into the harbour by the powerful waves. A team of 25 specialist divers then worked on clearing the harbour of the debris, wrapping up work on January 3. “There were so many sunken boats, we lost count of them,” he said.

While Galle harbour is an important commercial port for Sri Lanka, a port worker who did not want to be identified said that no commercial ships were damaged, with the fishing fleet instead bearing the brunt of the catastrophe. Scores of boats belonging to local fishermen, painted in incongruously cheerful hues of blue and yellow, red and green, still litter the side of the coastal road winding along the harbour.

Another crucial job the crew carried out was replacing the buoys that marked out a safe passage for ships into the harbour, which were torn from their anchors by the force of the tsunami. Captain Ashokan said the scale of the devastation and clean-up did not compare to other natural disasters he has seen, including a major cyclone, both physically and emotionally.

Captain Ashokan hailed the Sri Lankans for their bravery and energy in starting to swing back to normal life. “The Sri Lankans have risen to the occasion most admirably. Life is getting back to normal. People are not just sitting around, and that’s a welcome sign.”

Indian warship returns after completing relief work in Sri Lanka

PT, yes.

Naval aircraft provide relief to tsunami victims

Kochi, Jan 06 – A Dornier and an Islander aircraft of the INAS 550 named ‘the flying fish’ squadron of INS Garuda have been deployed in Sri Lanka and is operating from Ratmalana air base, a navy press release said here on Wednesday.

Black Sunday brings tri-services command to life, in a war-room

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 5: Tucked away in a corner of South Block, hums a high-security room 24 hours a day. It can accommodate almost 100 people, its row of cubicles house all Ministries. Entry to this room is through biometric identification although that’s being waived for some VIPs. It’s linked, real-time, to all military posts across the country via elaborate satellite hook-ups and to the operational rooms of all three services, the Navy, the Army and the Air Force. Even to the 31 Naval ships out at sea.

This room has existed since 2002, as the tri-services Integrated National Command Post—but only on paper, as an idea. Black Sunday brought it to life and today it’s the nerve centre of the Government’s biggest relief and rescue operation in recent history.

Equipped with state-of-the-art communication and control systems designed to meet the pressing demands of contemporary warfare, INCP was operationalised at the instance of the Navy which had to play the lead role in the disaster management on Sunday evening.

Each naval ship is a command post in itself and is in direct touch with the INCP. As of now there are 31 ships posted at various points along the affected areas. Further, the Army’s Southern Command has set up tactical headquarters at Chennai, which again, is in direct touch with this post and so will be the relief command being set up in the Andamans. There are nearly 8300 Army troops on the field along with Air Force and Navy personnel.

Within hours of the disaster, aircraft of the Aviation Research Centre were sent out to obtain the first aerial pictures. These have been pouring in since then along with satellite imageries. What the INCP has done is that it has drastically cut down the time for decision making.

And now orders have been passed for three unmanned aerial vehicles to carry out reconnaissance in the tsunami-affected areas as part of an accurate damage-assessment exercise.