The Indian Ministry of Defense announced Friday that it had found plane debris at sea “probably” from an Indian military aircraft that disappeared in 2016 with 29 people on board.
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“This discovery at the probable crash site, without any other record of missing aircraft in the same area, indicates that the debris likely belongs to the IAF (Indian Air Force) AN-32. , editor’s note) which crashed” in July 2016 above the Bay of Bengal, the ministry said in a statement.
The Russian-made Antonov An-32, which took off from a base near Chennai, in southeast India, bound for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, disappeared a quarter of an hour after its last contact with the control tower, in July 2016.
Major search operations carried out at the time failed to find his trace.
The defense ministry said a deep-sea drone probing the ocean floor in the Bay of Bengal found debris from the crashed plane at a depth of 3,400 meters, about 140 nautical miles (310 kilometers) away. ) south of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu.
The An-32 aircraft can fly for four hours without requiring refueling and are the most widely used transport aircraft by the Indian Air Force, but they have suffered numerous accidents and technical failures.
Before the 2016 disaster, one of the worst accidents involving an An-32 occurred in 1999: an aircraft crashed near New Delhi airport with 20 people on board, as well as three civilians on the ground. , had been killed.
In 2016, an IAF source told AFP that radar data from the missing plane showed that it had made a sharp left turn before quickly losing altitude.
India’s defense chief, General Bipin Rawat, was killed in 2021 along with 12 others when their Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter crashed in Tamil Nadu state.
The following year, two pilots were killed when their Soviet-era MiG-21 fighter jet crashed during a training sorties in Rajasthan.
Last year, a Russian Sukhoi Su-30 and a French Mirage 2000 collided in mid-air during exercises south of New Delhi and one of the pilots died.
The Air Force is gradually renewing its fleet, part of which still dates from the 1960s.
Experts believe that the delay in renewing this outdated equipment risks jeopardizing India’s national security.