IAF begins landing drills on Ganga Expressway in Uttar Pradesh's Shahjahanpur

What sets this expressway stretch apart is its unique capability to facilitate both day and night landings of fighter jets, making it the first such airstrip in the country.

Lucknow: Amid the tension between India and Pakistan following the killing of 26 tourists at Pahalgam by terrorists, the Indian Air Force (IAF) on Friday conducted a ‘’land and go’’ exercise on the under construction Ganga Expressway in Uttar Pradesh.

The exercise in which Rafale, Jaguar, Mirage fighter aircrafts among others took part, was conducted on a 3.5 kilometre long airstrip on the Expressway in Shahjahanpur district. The airstrip was near Peru village in the district.

Incidentally it was the first road runway in the country where landings of the fighter jets could take place during both day and night. The exercise was intended to test the expressway’s potential to be used as an alternative runway in times of wars or emergencies, the officials said.

According to the sources, from the security point of view as many as 250 CCTV cameras were installed on both sides of the air strip. The exercise would continue during the night also to test the night landing capability of the runway.

There were apprehensions that the exercise might be put off owing to the possibility of rains and poor visibility but the weather improved later. The exercise was witnessed by hundreds of people, including school children.

Ganga Expressway was 594 kilometre long and connects Meerut in the western UP with Prayagraj in the eastern region. Prime minister Narendra Modi had performed the ground warming ritual of the Expressway in December 2021.

Earlier the IAF had conducted similar exercises on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, Purvanchal Expressway and Bundelkhand Expressway.