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New Delhi : The Indian Air Force conducted pan India exercise Gagan Shakti-2018 from April 8 to 22, 2018. The aim of the exercise was real time coordination, deployment and employment of air power in a short and intense battle scenario. For an exercise of such scale, the planning process started almost nine months back. During Gagan Shakti-2018, lAF exercised its entire war fighting machinery to validate its concept of operations and war waging capability.
The exercise was conducted in two phases so that all Commands get adequate opportunity to test the efficacy of their preparedness. Phase-I of the exercise involved activation of Western, South Western and Southern Air Commands, with affiliated Army and Naval components. Phase-II of the exercise involved activation of Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Air Commands.
During the exercise, all types of combat missions, encompassing all air campaigns, were conducted. Fighter aircraft undertook surge operations i.e. generating maximum number of sorties in a 24 hours cycle. These included long range missions with concentrated live and simulated weapon releases across all air to ground ranges in India, creation of Air Defence umbrella to facilitate operation of ground forces and Counter Surface Force Operations in support of Army in various sectors, during both phases Maritime Operations involving long range maritime strikes with Maritime Reconnaissance support by Indian Navy aircraft were also practiced. In addition, capabilities of upgraded Mirage-2000 and MiG-29 aircraft were tested for the first time in an operational environment.
Army troops and combat vehicles were deployed to simulate Tactical Battle Areas in all Commands and some of the Army exercises were dovetailed with air operations for simulation of realistic battlefield environment. Ships were deployed, both in the Arabian Sea as well as in Bay of Bengal, for anti-shipping strikes by IAF maritime aircraft operating from bases on the east and west coast, as well as from island territories, according to a PIB release.During the exercise, more than 11,000 sorties were flown, which include approx 9,000 sorties by fighter aircraft.
To sustain the tempo of operations on such a large scale, on a 24 x 7 basis, the training status of entire IAF was enhanced, especially the aircrew. All qualified and medically fit crew upto 48 years of age were made proficient and current by giving them re-validation training on combat assets, employed during the exercise. Over 1,400 officers and 14,000 men were pulled out of training establishments and deployed for the exercise, to augment existing resources.
Intense operations of this magnitude, in a short span of time, involved very close coordination with Airport Authority of India for airspace coordination. It was an endeavour of the IAF to conduct this exercise with negligible disruptions of civil traffic anywhere in the country. IAF had also activated a number of civil airfields to support combat operations during the exercise. All operations were conducted in a Network Enabled scenario with a very high reliability of communications, networked air defence systems employing op enabling software.
A major highlight of the exercise was a very high availability and reliability of all combat assets including aircraft, missile systems and radars. High tempo operations also enabled the IAF to ascertain sustainability of the logistics chain.
IAF was able to achieve 80% serviceability of aircraft while radars and surface to air guided weapons maintained a serviceability of 97%, which included some of the legacy systems that were over 40 years old. Exercise Gagan Shakti-2018 provided IAF with an excellent opportunity to practice its war time drills and undertake operations in realistic scenario.