The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cleared an Indian Air Force (IAF) plan to establish a forward fighter at Deesa in Banaskantha district of Gujarat. The construction of the airbase is likely to cost the Indian exchequer more than Rs 1000 crore, reported India Today.
“The proposal for converting the small Deesa airport with a 1,000-metre runway, which was used for helicopter landings and VVIP movements, has been gathering dust for quite some time. The fact is that 4,000 acres for the air base, which will plug the critical air defence gap between the Barmer and Bhuj air bases, was acquired nearly two decades ago. This decision was pushed by defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman,” a defence ministry official told Hindustan Times.
A former IAF chief told the newspaper that the Deesa base will fill a gap between Barmer in the north and Bhuj/Naliya in the west.
The distance between Deesa and Mirpur Khas in Pakistan's Sindh is 349.8 kilometers.
The newspaper added that the full-fledged fighter base could eventually cost upwards of Rs 4,000 crore.
India Today added that Deesa has an airstrip and is used by civilian and charter flights. Besides upgrading the airstrip, the IAF will be building blast-proof pens to keep fighters.
The base will come under the purview of the IAF’s Gandhinagar-headquartered South Western Air Command (SWAC). SWAC’s operational areas include Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan, HT added.
The reports came at a time when Indian military is facing a fund crunch, as revealed in a string of reports tabled in Parliament this month. A recent report claimed that the IAF has projected that it may not be able to make tranche payments for its past purchases in fiscal 2018-19, as adequate resources haven’t been allotted by the finance ministry.
The IAF has been allocated Rs 35,755 crore for the next fiscal year, the amount that top officials say falls well short of the amount it has to pay for purchases made in the past few years, including for systems such as the Rafale fighter jets, Apache attack choppers and Chinook heavy lift helicopters.
