Navy sensors recover IAF plane from Arabian Sea

NEW DELHI: Using recently-acquired sensors and underwater cameras meant for detecting enemy mines, the navy recently helped the Indian Air Force (IAF) recover the wreckage of a MiG-29 aircraft that had crashed into the Arabian Sea near Gujarat coast in August this year.

“This was a unique case, where our officers used advanced sensors to recover aircraft wreckage,” a senior navy officer said.

The pilot managed to safely eject moments before the crash, but IAF needed the wreckage, especially the black box, to ascertain the cause of the accident.
As the mishap took place over sea, IAF launched search operations with the help of divers from the navy base INS Valsura.

“The task of locating a crashed aircraft, whose parts had been swept away far and wide by strong currents, was extremely difficult in the vast sea,” the naval officer said.
The navy decided to innovate and use its sea-mine detecting equipment to search the seabed.

“Our team of officers thought of using advanced underwater cameras with Sonar (sound navigation and ranging) as the aircraft’s airframe consisted of metal, which would reflect the Sonar back,” the officer said.

The navy dispatched one of its minesweepers with an offshore patrolling vessel equipped with high-definition side-array cameras and Sonar systems and within days, it started recovering the wreckage.