New Delhi – The Indian air force’s fleet modernization is on track, and it is inevitable that the IAF will have three or four different types of aircraft, IAF Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik says. “In the next 10 to 15 years, India will have Sukhoi SU-30s, the medium multirole combat aircraft, the fifth-generation fighter aircraft jointly being developed with Russia, and the indigenous light combat aircraft (Tejas) in the IAF inventory,” Naik says.

New Delhi – India’s space agency has developed a supercomputer to tackle complex aerospace problems and other launch issues. The SAGA-220 – or the Supercomputer for Aerospace with GPU Architecture – will be the country’s fastest supercomputer in terms of theoretical peak performance of 220 trillion floating point operations per second, or TeraFLOPS. It will be used by space scientists to ensure that space-related calculations take place more quickly, says S. Satish, spokesman of the Bengaluru-based Indian Space and Research Organization.

New Delhi – A state-run Pawan Hans helicopter carrying an Indian minister and four other people has been missing since April 30 in India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. The AS350 B-3 was carrying Dorjee Khandu, the chief minister of the state, along with the others. The aircraft’s last radio contact with the ground was about 20 min. after takeoff while flying over Sela Pass along the Chinese border. The incident comes after another Pawan Hans helicopter crashed in Tawang on April 19, killing 17 people and injuring six.