Sukhois carry out long-range precision-strike drill in Indian Ocean Region

INTERNATIONAL DESK: The Sukhoi-30MKI fighters have now practised long-range precision strikes in the western seaboard of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) in a combat training mission that lasted almost eight hours, which comes soon after Rafale jets undertook a similar exercise on the eastern one.

The “large package” of Sukhois and some other assets took off from an air base in Gujarat and then “hit” the designated target near the Gulf of Oman after mid-air refuelling by IL-78 tankers, an IAF officer said on Friday.

The Rafales, after taking off from the Hasimara airbase in northern West Bengal, had also conducted an over six-hour mission to hit a target in north Andaman on the eastern seaboard last week.

“The Sukhois have done it now on a different axis. So, both the seaboards have been covered,” the officer said.

The twin IAF training missions constitute strategic signalling to China, which with the world’s largest Navy with 355 warships and submarines is steadily stepping-up its presence in the IOR.

Amid the continuing military confrontation with China in eastern Ladakh since May 2020, the IAF has been practising such interdiction missions in the IOR to choke China’s sea lanes of communication for huge energy and other imports from the Malacca Strait to the Persian Gulf.

Apart from the western and eastern fronts, the Sukhois are also deployed at Pune and Thanjavur in peninsular India. The Sukhois armed with BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, whose strike range has been extended to 450-km from the original 290-km, were first based at the Thanjavur airbase in 2020 to give IAF “strategic depth” in the IOR.

With a combat radius of almost 1,500-km without mid-air refuelling, the Sukhois armed with BrahMos constitute a deadly weapons package for pinpointed strikes against high-value targets like warships on the high seas or enemy positions, bunkers, command-and-control centres and the like on land.

IAF chief Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari had last week said that the lethal combination of the BrahMos missiles, which fly at almost three times the speed of sound at Mach 2.8, fitted on the Sukhoi-30MKI fighter jets has made the IAF’s “deterrence value go up by leaps and bounds”.

The next-generation BrahMos, a smaller and lighter version of the existing missile that is under-development, will be fitted onto smaller fighters like the MiG-29s, Mirage-2000s and Tejas light combat aircraft in the future. An 800-km range variant of the BrahMos has also undergone its maiden test, as was earlier reported by TOI.