It was indigenously built Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems (AEWC), a flagship programme of the DRDO, which was used by the Indian Air Force (IAF) during the Balakot airstrikes across the border as it could provide effective radar surveillance on air and ground across long distances not possible by the ground based radar, informed DRDO Director General Micro-electronic devices, computational systems and cyber systems Suma Varughese on Monday.
Addressing the ASTC- Dr. K.V.Raghavan memorial lecture at the ‘Women Scientists Conclave: Self Reliance’ organised by the National Academy of Sciences, India and Academy for Science, Technology and Communication (ASTC) at the CSIR-IICT auditorium, the top scientist said that it took a decade and a half to come up with an effective AEWC with a range of more than 300 km, operating from 30,000 ft altitude as the developed nations were not ready to part with the technology.
The Indian AEWC was built on the Brazilian Embraer transport plane platform like a few other countries but the process of integrating the systems with six km of cabling for looking like an eye in front to detect, identify and help in the battle operational part was a challenging process. She noted that four defence scientists and four IAF personnel had lost their lives in one of trial runs in 1999.
