Mirage-2000 lands on Yamuna Expressway

The Indian Air Force (IAF) on Thursday landed its Mirage-2000 fighter aircraft on the Yamuna Expressway near Agra as part of its plan to use the highways for emergency landing.

The aircraft took off from its home base in Gwalior and made a practice approach on the highway, coming down to a height of 100 metres, before landing in the next approach. The eight-lane expressway connects Delhi and Agra.

Besides IAF personnel, the early morning touchdown near Agra was witnessed by the officials from the civil administration and the police force, who gave the clearances. The IAF claimed that this is the first time a highway was used as a landing strip for a fighter jet.

The IAF moved a mobile air traffic control unit, safety services, rescue vehicles and bird clearance parties before the fighter jet received a thumbs up for the touchdown.
Even in an emergency situation, the IAF would first fly in a support team in a helicopter, before a fighter jet is allowed to land on road.

In the first phase, the IAF plans to try emergency landing at least on two highways. While the Yamuna Expressway was the first choice because of its location and strength, the search is on for a second site.

“The IAF plans to activate more such stretches on highways in the future,” says an official. The bigger and heavier Su-30 MKI aircraft, however, would never be able to land on a highway, but the smaller ones like the Jaguars and the MiGs can.

A fighter jet’s touchdown and take-off from a road is a challenging task because of the narrow margin of error for fighter jet operation and poor load bearing capacity of most of the Indian roads.

On the contrary, the special operation C-130 J Super Hercules can even land on dirt roads and need a shorter runway.

As airbases are one of the first targets of an enemy attack in a war, use of highways was a back-up plan for the IAF, which tested it for the first time on Thursday.

India, however, is not the only country with such plans. Taiwan regularly lands its Mirage-2000 on highways as a part of its preparedness plan against Chinese attacks.
DH News Service