[Stratpost]
Commander Sanjay Chauhan, Commanding Officer of INAS 310 Cobras.
The Indian Navy’s electronic warfare and intelligence gathering squadron, INAS (Indian Naval Air Squadron) 310, better known as Cobras have completed 50 years of service. Why this is a special milestone is the nature of the service rendered by the squadron, which happens to be the aerial eyes and ears of the Naval Air Arm.The Cobras have over 80,000 hours of flight on the Alize and then the Dornier aircraft, since 1961. To put things into perspective, squadrons flying the more glamorous fighters of the Indian Navy, like the now-retired Sea Hawks, the Harriers and more recently, the MiG-29K/KUB would have accumulated flight time of around a quarter of that of the Cobras.
In the past half-century, the squadron has been tasked with Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), striking enemy targets in Goa and East Pakistan, flying the Breguet Alize aircraft, a carrier-borne fighter carrying a crew of three.
[TOI] A full-fledged maritime museum aboard the decommissioned aircraft carrier IMS Vikrant will finally see the light of day, with the state government likely to finalise the bids for the project by April. The government had announced a proposal to convert the Old Lady of the Indian Navy into a museum on the very day she was decommissioned, on January 31, 1997.
