India deploys 4 warships to locate missing Malaysian plane

NEW DELHI: India has deployed five warships and five aircraft, including a newly-acquired naval P-8I long-range reconnaissance plane and an Air Force C-130J Super Hercules, in the ongoing multi-nation hunt for the Malaysian airliner that went missing six days ago.

The Indian effort under the name of "Operation SearchLight" comes almost three days after Kuala Lumpur first flashed a request to New Delhi, the delay in part being due to "the absence of specific coordinates" in the initial messages as well as some lack of coordination among Indian agencies.

But now the search has been joined in the right earnest after the Royal Malaysian Navy asked India for help in a search area spread over 35,000 square km south of the Andaman Sea. "The southern tip of the designated search area is just about 60 nautical miles from Campbell Bay in the A&N archipelago, while its northern edge is 267 nautical miles from Port Blair," said an officer.

"The search area is being divided into different sectors that will handled by different countries. Real-time communication has also been established between the naval maritime operations centre in New Delhi and the Royal Malaysian Navy," he added.

While the Navy is the " lead agency" in the maritime search and rescue mission, IAF too dispatched a C-130J Super Hercules, which was at Kalaikunda (West Bengal) on a mission from the Hindon airbase near New Delhi, to Port Blair on Thursday. The P-8I, in turn, was sent from the naval air station at Arakkonam in Tamil Nadu.

The Dorniers, P-8I and C-130J are all packed with radars and sensors that can be used to detect the debris of the Malaysia Airlines aircraft. "The advanced radars now give two-dimensional pictures instead of single blips,'' said the officer.

As for the Indian ships, amphibious warships INS Kumbhir and INS Kesari, offshore patrol vessel INS Saryu and Coast Guard fast patrol vessels Kanaklata-Barua and Sagar, primarily from Port Blair and Campbell Bay, are fast steaming towards the designated search area.

India has been slowly bolstering force-levels at the tri-Service command at the strategically-located A&N Islands to counter China's strategic moves in the Indian Ocean region as well as ensure security of the sea lanes converging towards the Malacca Strait.

Towards this end, the Navy commissioned had recently commissioned INS Baaz at Campbell Bay, making it the southernmost air station of the Indian armed forces overlooking the Malacca Strait and dominating the Six-Degree Channel. It will help in Operation SearchLight now.