INS Parundu is an Indian naval air station located near

Uchipuli Uchipuli or Uchippuli is a locality in the Mandapam block of Ramanathapuram district, Tamil Nadu, India. It is a major source of water supply for the Ramanathapuram town. An Indian Navy air station, INS Parundu, is located near Uchipuli. Trans ...

in the

Ramanathapuram Ramanathapuram (), also known as Ramnad, is a town and a municipality in Ramanathapuram district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the administrative headquarters of Ramanathapuram district and the second largest town (by population) i ...

of the state of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil languag ...

. It operates under the Eastern Naval Command of the Indian Navy. The air station will be opened up for civilian flights under Phase 2 of the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) of the Government of India also known as

UDAN ''Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik'' ( Hindi for "Let the common citizens of the country fly"), known by its acronym ''UDAN'' ( Hindi for "flight") is a regional airport development program of the Government of India and part of the Regional Connect ...

and the

Airports Authority of India The Airports Authority of India, or AAI, is a public sector enterprise under the ownership of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India. It is responsible for creating, upgrading, maintaining, and managing civil aviation infrastruc ...

(AAI) has started preparatory work at the airstrip. It is sandwiched between

Rameswaram Rameswaram (; also transliterated as Ramesvaram, Rameshwaram) is a municipality in the Ramanathapuram district of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is on Pamban Island separated from mainland India by the Pamban channel and is about 40 ki ...

National Highway Road and Railway track which leads towards Rameswaram.

History

The airfield in

was previously the abandoned Ramnad Civil Aerodrome. Naval aviation first utilised the facilities in 1982, to monitor the

Palk Strait The Palk Strait ( ta, பாக்கு நீரிணை ''Pākku Nīriṇai'', si, පෝක් සමුද්‍ර සන්ධිය ''Pok Samudra Sandhiya'') is a strait between the Tamil Nadu state of India and the Jaffna Distri ...

in the wake of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The facilities were fully transferred to the Navy on 9 June 1985, and the naval air station was initially commissioned ''INS Rajali II''. On 26 March 2009, the base was renamed and commissioned as ''INS Parundu'', for the Tamil word for an

eagle Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, j ...

. The facilities have since been upgraded to operate larger aircraft. It is primarily used by the navy as a reconnaissance station to monitor the South East

Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west and northwest by India, on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. Its southern limit is a line bet ...

, the northern

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...

, the

Gulf of Mannar The Gulf of Mannar ( ) is a large shallow bay forming part of the Laccadive Sea in the Indian Ocean with an average depth of .

and the

. On 25 August 2017, an Integrated Automatic Aviation Meteorological System (IAAMS) was added.

Units

The primary units based at ''INS Parundu'' are Naval Air Squadrons (INAS) that operate HAL Chetak helicopters, Islander and

Dornier 228 The Dornier 228 is a twin- turboprop STOL utility aircraft, designed and first manufactured by Dornier GmbH (later DASA Dornier, Fairchild-Dornier) from 1981 until 1998. Two hundred and forty-five were built in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. In ...

reconnaissance aircraft. Besides upgrading the runway, the Navy has installed dedicated facilities to operate UAVs from the air station. INAS 344, operating

IAI Heron The IAI Heron (Machatz-1) is a medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by the Malat (UAV) division of Israel Aerospace Industries. It is capable of Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) operations of up to 52 h ...

and

IAI Searcher The IAI Searcher (also known by the Hebrew name מרומית ''Meyromit'' - "Marsh tern", or officially in Israel as the חוגלה ''Hugla'' - "Alectoris") is a reconnaissance UAV developed in Israel in the 1980s. In the following decade, it re ...

Mk II UAVs is based at INS Parundu.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:INS Parundu Parundu Airports in Tamil Nadu 1982 establishments in Tamil Nadu Airports established in 1982 Military installations established in 1982

History

Units

See also

References