EXERCISE INIOCHOS-23: The Indian Air Force (IAF) will be participating in Exercise INIOCHOS-23, a multi-national air exercise hosted by the Hellenic Air Force. The exercise will be conducted at the Andravida Air Base in Greece.The Indian Air Force will be participating with four Su-30 MKI and two C-17 aircraft.Other participants include France with its Rafale jets, the United States of America with its F-16 jets and MQ-9 drones, Jordan with its F-16 jets, Spain with its EF-18 aircraft, Italy with its Tornado aircraft, Cyprus with its AW139 helicopter, Saudi Arabia with its F-15 jets, Slovenia with its PC-9 aircraft, Austria with its Intelligence personnel and Canada with its Air Traffic Controllers.
UDAN 5.0: The Ministry of Civil Aviation has launched the fifth phase of the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS)-UDAN. UDAN 5.0 aims to raise the momentum, connect new routes and bring us closer to the target of operationalizing 1000 routes & 50 additional airports, heliports and water aerodromes.Key features of UDAN 5.0:
- focuses on Category-2 (20-80 seats) and Category-3 (>80 seats).
- Viability gap funding(VGF) will be provided at a 600 km stage length for both Priority and Non-Priority areas which were earlier capped at 500 km.
- Airlines can now propose routes they want to fly under the UDAN 5.0. The move replaces the previous system in which the Ministry predetermined the routes airlines could operate on.
- The airlines would be required to submit an action/business plan after 2 months from the issuance of LoA wherein they submit their aircraft acquisition plan/availability of aircraft, crew, slots, etc. at the time of the Technical Proposal.
- The same route will not be awarded to a single airline more than once, whether in different networks or in the same network.
- Exclusivity will be withdrawn if the average quarterly Passenger Load Factor(PLF) is higher than 75% for four continuous quarters, to prevent exploitation of the monopoly on a route.
- Airlines must start up their operations no later than four months after the route has been awarded; the previous limit was six months.
Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) interceptor: Recently, The DRDO and Indian Navy successfully conducted a maiden flight trial of sea-based endo-atmospheric interceptor missile off the coast of Odisha.India entered an elite club of nations with the capability to fire a Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) interceptor from a naval platform.Prior to this, DRDO has successfully demonstrated land-based ballistic missile defence system with capability. India’s Ballistic Missile Defence Programme:India launched the BMD program after Kargil war in 1999 to counter the enemy nation’s ballistic missiles that usually delivered both conventional and nuclear warheads.
Two-tires of BMD system:Prithvi Air Defence missile:It was originally tested in 2006 and is capable of intercepting and destroying missiles at exo-atmospheric altitudes ranging from 50 to 180 kilometres.The Pradyumna interceptor has already replaced the Prithvi Air Defence BMD.
Exo-atmospheric missiles are capable of completing missions in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Advanced Air Defence Missile: lower altitude interception.It was first tested in 2007 for endo-atmosphere at altitudes of 15-40 KM.The endo-atmospheric missiles are the ones that operate within the earth’s atmosphere that covers an altitude below 100 KM.
Logistics Performance Index 2023: India’s rank in the recently released World Bank’s LPI 2023 has improved by six places.It is an interactive benchmarking tool created to help countries identify the challenges and opportunities they face in their performance on trade logistics and what they can do to improve their performance.It measures the ease of establishing reliable supply chain connections and structural factors that make it possible, such as the quality of logistics services, trade and transport-related infrastructure, as well as border controls.
Highlights of LPI 2023: The LPI 2023 allows for comparisons across 139 countries.The LPI 2023, for the first time, measures the speed of trade with indicators derived from big datasets tracking shipments.Singapore and Finland are the most efficient and highest-ranked LPI countries as per the 2023 LPI.India is ranked 38 out of 139 countries, climbing six places from the previous index.Two major factors for India’s jump in the index could be modernisation and digitalisation, which the report quotes as a reason for emerging economies like India to leapfrog advanced countries.
Leave a Comment