IAF pulls off night landing at Kargil Advanced Landing Ground with terrain masking (GS Paper 3, Defence)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Why in news?
- For the first time, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has carried out a night landing at the unidirectional Kargil Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) with special commandos on board.
- The aircraft used was a C-130J Super Hercules, which employed terrain masking en route to avoid detection.
Details:
- This was a major achievement for the Indian military that showcases capabilities to land for operations and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) at night and during the day.
- While such ALG landings have been done earlier and are part of the practice, this is the first time when a night landing has been undertaken.
Challenges:
- Kargil ALG is at about 10,500 feet and the approach is unidirectional.
- It is surrounded by hills, which gives limited space for manoeuvring. Hence, pulling off a night landing is very difficult.
ALGs in India:
- Besides the Kargil ALG, there is also one at Nyoma, is being converted into a full-fledged air base.
- India also has Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) and Fukche ALG in Ladakh.
- The full exploitation of the ALGs is crucial for operational needs and this was felt during the ongoing stand-off with China at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
IIT Delhi team makes first hi res landslide risk map for India
(GS Paper 3, Disaster Management)
Why in news?
- In late 2023, torrential rain during the northeast monsoon triggered heavy floods and landslides in multiple States in North India, killing hundreds of people.
- Given the number of fatalities due to landslides in India, a national landslide susceptibility map can help identify the most dangerous areas and help allocate resources for mitigation strategies better.
- Manabendra Saharia, an assistant professor in the civil engineering department and head of the HydroSense Lab at IIT Delhi and his team made one.
Factors:
- They collected information on the factors that rendered an area susceptible to landslides. Some of them are soil cover (or the type of soil in the area), the number of trees covering the area, and how far it is from any roads or mountains.
- The fewer trees there are in a place, the closer it is to road-building activity, and the steeper the local slope, the more unstable the place will be and thus more prone to landslides.
- They gathered information from across the country on 16 such factors, which they called landslide conditioning factors. They said GeoSadak, an online system that has data on the national road network in India, was particularly helpful because it displayed data on roads even outside cities.
Landslide map:
- After all the analyses, and with the help of GSI’s extensive collection of landslide data, they developed a high-resolution landslide susceptibility map.
- Here, they could plot the susceptibility at a resolution of 100 m. That is, they estimated the susceptibility for each 100 sq. m parcel across the whole country.
- This map, which they called the ‘Indian Landslide Susceptibility Map’, is the first of its kind by virtue of being on a national scale, leaving out no locations in the country.
Early warning system:
- The map acknowledged some well-known regions of high landslide susceptibility, like parts of the foothills of the Himalaya, the Assam-Meghalaya region, and the Western Ghats.
- It also revealed some previously unknown places with high risk, such as some areas of the Eastern Ghats, just north of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
- The map is expected to be useful for organisations involved in investigating and mitigating landslides, like the GSI, the Ministry of Mines, and the National Disaster Management Authority.
Way Forward:
- Dr. Saharia and his group are also in the process of building an infrastructure vulnerability map – a cartogram that will depict the stretches of roads, railways, and buildings that are particularly vulnerable to landslides.
