Indian Air Force is undertaking AN-32 Life Extension Programme in India. The project was innagurated by Air Marshal P V Athawale, commanding-in-chief, maintenance command, at Air Force Station, Chakeri. The upgrades will be carried out at 1 BRD, kanpur. 1 BRD is a part of IAF’s indigenisation group 1. The group includes 1 BRD, 3 BRD, 4 BRD, 5 BRD, and 11 BRD. 1 BRD has the task of Major overhaul, Capital repair, Medium repair on transport aircraft or Russian origin & their avionics and mechanical aggregate.
The pilots and technical staff have already been trained at Antonov’s facility in Ukraine and are now scheduled to finish the task indigenously at Kanpur.
India recently re-inducted the first of the four AN-32′s which were upgraded in Ukraine. The new designation of the aircraft is An-32RE.
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An-32′s were first inducted in 1984. In June 2009, India signed a $398 million contract with Ukraine to improve the life span of the 104 AN-32s in the IAF fleet. The aircrafts will be upgraded in a phased manner by 2017. India had inducted 118 AN-32s and 14 have been lost in crashes.
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well its time now to plan the replacement too by an indigenous 12 ton lift capability aircraft. These should start rolling out by 2025 and we need at least nine squadrons ie 108.