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India signs $210-million AWACS deal with Brazil

Even as India awaits the delivery of the first of the three Israeli 'Phalcon' AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) later this year, it has signed a $210-million deal with Brazilian firm Embraer for three aircraft for its own indigenous miniature AWACS project.

The indigenous AEW-&C (airborne early warning and control) systems being developed by DRDO will be mounted on the three Brazilian Embraer-145 jets, with the delivery of the first one slated for July 2011.

India, incidentally, had earlier acquired five plush EMB 135-BT "Legacy" executive jets, under a Rs 727-crore contract with Embraer, to ferry VVIPs around the country.

"The AEW&C project is worth Rs 1,800 crore. The EMB-145 aircraft will be modified to carry DRDO's active array antenna units, which will be mounted on top of the aircraft's fuselage," said an official.

"Though not as advanced as the Phalcons, the indigenous AWACS will nevertheless be potent force-multipliers. The full-fledged Embraer-145 based AEW&C will be tested for mission systems in India by DRDO and IAF in 2012," he added.

The deal signed on Thursday comes nine years after DRDO's technology demonstrator HS-748 Avro, a test platform with an airborne early warning system, crashed in Tamil Nadu, killing eight persons. The importance of AWACS, or "eyes in the sky", can be gauged from the fact that they can detect incoming hostile cruise missiles and aircraft much before ground-based radars, apart from directing air defence fighters during combat operations with enemy jets. A Phalcon AWACS over Amritsar, for instance, will be able to detect a Pakistani F-16 as soon as it takes off from Sargodha.

Under the $1.1-billion Phalcon AWACS deal signed in March 2004, three Israeli early-warning radar and communication systems are being integrated with Russian IL-76 heavy transport military aircraft to give its first advanced AWACS. The deliveries were to begin from November 2007 but will now take place only from September 2008 onwards due to "technical difficulties".