Fifth airfield opened in Arunachal Close to China border, refurbished landing ground to aid movement of troops, material

Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 3 More than 54 years after India was caught napping due to poor infrastructure during the 1962 Chinese aggression, yet another airfield in north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh has been opened for military use. This is the fifth such airfield to be upgraded under a long-winded plan for rapid deployment of artillery guns, troops and even tanks. An Advanced Landing Ground (euphuism for British-era mud-paved landing strip) at Mechuka, located in Yargyap river valley of West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh, has been upgraded to a paved runaway. The Indian Air Force today said it had landed its biggest transport plane, the Boeing C-17, at the 6,200-ft-high airfield. The plane can carry some 70 tonnes of load. The airfield is located near the Mcmahon Line (the boundary with China) and the nearest air/rail head is at Dibrugarh, about 500 km through mountains which are landslide-prone, stretching the travel time to two days. The landing of C-17 is a quantum jump from the existing capability of AN-32 and C-130J aircraft. Such airlift capability facilitates critical requirement of transfer of men and material in this rugged terrain of several adjacent river valleys, interspersed by high mountain ranges that inhibit road connectivity. Besides Mechuka, airfileds at Ziro, Along, Walong and Passighat are the other ones which have been opened. Passighat allows fighter jet operations. The last of the ALGs at Tuting is expected to open by the year-end while the helicopter landing ground at Tawang would be ready by mid-2017. The British had created small mud-paved landing grounds during the World War-II for their Burma and east India operations. The existing ALGs are too small in length and allow only very small aircraft to land and have a non-existent ground support. These are rendered unusable during rains. These airfields dot various folds of the Himalayas in Arunachal and cover an east-west axis, bringing the IAF and Army’s rapid deployment capabilities much closer to the Mcmahon Line