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P. 22
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
PREPARED
TO
PERFORM
Air Marshal SP Dharkar,
PVSM, AVSM, Air Officer
Commanding in Chief,
Eastern Air Command,
Indian Air Force
“Our Area of Responsibility includes Shillong, where the Head Quarters have inducted as also the S-400
a 6,300 km long international of Eastern Air Command is located. long-range SAM system, which
boundary with China, Nepal, Bhutan, We are the only Air Command in was also inducted into service, very
Myanmar and Bangladesh.” Air India, which has national boundar- recently.
Marshal SP Dharkar, PVSM, ies with five nations - Nepal, China,
AVSM, Air Officer Commanding Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh. All these acquisitions have contrib-
in Chief, Eastern Air Command, EAC’s AOR has different kinds of uted to substantial upgrades to our
Indian Air Force terrain, starting from sea level in combat capability. Notwithstanding
the West Bengal area and going our new inductions, we also have
The Indian Air Force’s Eastern all the way up to nearly 20,000 feet older equipment which we continue
Air Command has a large area of above sea level in the Sikkim zone. to operate that also pack a punch
responsibility and is tasked with Given the fact that we have also the in terms of combat capability and
protecting India’s eastern bor- Brahmaputra plains in between, the bring quantity and quality to us.
ders. In an exclusive interview weather in the Eastern part of India
with Atul Chandra at the Eastern is also very daunting. Q2 Could you please provide an
Air Command’s Head Quarters insight into the combat capability
in Shillong, in North East India, In the recent decade, the Indian at Eastern Air Command, includ-
Air Marshal Dharkar outlined Air Force has also acquired ing the recently inducted Rafales,
some of the recent changes at his cutting-edge technologies and which were operationalised in a
command. platforms, many of which are very short period of time?
operational with Eastern Air
Edited Excerpts from the Interview Command. We have had significant Air Marshal SP Dharkar: I’ll start
new inductions, which include the off with the reverse sequence first,
C-130Js and C-17 transport aircraft, the Indian Air Force has been
Q1 Could you please let us know CH-47 Chinook utility helicopter and operating Sukhoi SU-30 MKIs from
the various roles and responsibil- the AH64 Apache attack helicop- the late 1990s. The Sukhoi’s bring
ities that come under Eastern Air ter, and the Rafale fighter jet of to the table a host of capabilities
Command? course, which we have got in the and when we initiated acquiring
very recent past. In addition to this the SU-30s, we were already in
Air Marshal SP Dharkar: Let me we are building capabilities in our the process of working out as to
put Eastern Air Command’s (EAC) Surface to Air Missile (SAM) capa- what next generation fighter we
Area of Responsibility (AOR) into bilities, both in terms of the Medium would acquire. Towards that the
perspective. We operate out of Range SAM (MR SAM) which we Indian Air Force went into a real
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