Arakkonam aces

Female officers from the P-81 crew talk about their journeys and experiences

- PRADIP R. SAGAR/INS RAJALI

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER Ambica Hooda and eight fellow officers swung into action as soon as they received a three-word code on their phones—“fire, fire, fire”. Responding to the call, they assembled in the mission briefing room of INS Rajali naval air station in Arakkonam—and it was just about 6 am. The station houses the Indian Naval Air Squadron 312A and India’s most potent asset for aerial reconnaissance—the Poseidon-8I, a variant of the Boeing 737. Arakkonam, some 80km from Chennai, is one of the hottest towns in India, with temperatures going past 43 degrees Celsius regularly.

When THE WEEK visited, however, the temperature had dropped after a good monsoon. Inside the briefing room, Captain Ravi Kumar, the commanding officer of the squadron, called Sky Lions, updated them about the movement of a Chinese landing platform, Dock Xian-32, which was passing through the southern Indian Ocean region, before it entered Sri Lankan waters. Hooda, who has more than 3,400 hours of flying experience, left in a Poseidon-8I, along with Lieutenant Commander Aruna Bhardwaj and Lieutenant Deepa Singh. They were joined by two pilots, two in-flight technicians and two other male officers.

After nearly six hours, Hooda’s team spotted the Dock Xian-32, photographed it and sent the images to naval bases and coastal radar stations for follow-up.

“‘Welcome to the Indian Ocean’. This is the message we usually send whenever we spot a Chinese warship or submarine. In this mission, our task was only to track the Chinese warship,” Hooda told the WEEK. In addition to surveillance gear, the Poseidon-8I is equipped with armaments for anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface warfare.