IAF's C-17 Joins Efforts To Bring Back Indians, Set To Fly To Romania ...

NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force’s (IAF) heavy-lift transport aircraft — C-17 Globemaster III — was flying to Romania early on Wednesday to assist in the ongoing efforts to evacuate thousands of Indian citizens from conflict-torn Ukraine in the midst of a war with Russia, foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Tuesday.

The C-17 IAF aircraft was scheduled to fly out to Romania at 4am on Wednesday to bring back Indians, Shringla told reporters during a media briefing. “More IAF flights will be mounted in the coming days,” he added.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the IAF to join the evacuation efforts.

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According to officials familiar with the matter, the IAF had put its C-17 Globemaster III fleet on standby to execute any mission assigned to it, on a day an Indian medical student was killed in Kharkiv.

“Leveraging the capacities of IAF will ensure that more people are evacuated in a shorter time. It will also help deliver humanitarian aid more efficiently. IAF is likely to deploy several C-17 aircraft as part of Operation Ganga from today,” said one of the officials.

IAF’s C-17s played a crucial role in transporting soldiers and military equipment to eastern Ladakh last year when the border row with China was at its peak. The US-origin heavy lifter was also at the centre of IAF’s efforts for Covid-19 relief last year.

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IAF operates a fleet of 11 C-17 transport planes, bought from the United States in a government-to-government deal worth around $4.5 billion.

“The IAF is geared up for any requirement of the evacuation of our citizens from Ukraine,” an IAF official said.

The aircraft was also used to evacuate Indian citizens from Afghanistan last year. It has been involved in humanitarian missions in Nepal, the Maldives and Yemen in recent years.

“Using C-17s for evacuating Indians caught in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a good move. IAF has executed such missions flawlessly in the past. The C-17 has a flexible configuration that will allow it to bring back 300 to 400 people in a single flight,” said retired Air Marshal Anil Chopra, director general at the Centre for Air Power Studies.

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The C-17 fleet made a remarkable contribution in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic last year by transporting much-needed empty cryogenic oxygen containers from foreign countries and domestic locations to filling stations across India to speed up the distribution of oxygen to hospitals.

The fleet was used extensively to move soldiers, tanks and infantry combat vehicles to Ladakh last year to counter China’s military build-up in the sensitive sector.

The C-17 can take off from a 7,000ft airstrip with 72,574kg of payload, fly 4,481km and land on a small, unprepared runway measuring less than 3,000ft. The four-engine plane can deliver three infantry combat vehicles or the main battle tank or a heavy-lift chopper to forward bases in a single deployment. It can airdrop 102 paratroopers and equipment.

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The use of IAF aircraft will offer more options to fly out Indian nationals from the countries neighbouring Ukraine, especially from areas closer to the Ukrainian border that aren’t serviced by commercial flights, people familiar with the matter said, declining to be named.

Indians exiting Ukraine via land borders with Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia are mostly being evacuated on charter flights from Budapest and Bucharest.

However, the people acknowledged that the process for obtaining clearances for such flights is more complex than the one for civilian charter flights, and will involve liaising with the military and other authorities in several countries.

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“It opens up more options for us and we have access to more assets that can help us deal with all sorts of contingencies,” one of the people said.