SSB Awareness Series: What is ULB in airplanes?

All Indian Air Force transport aircraft and helicopters, which fly over the sea and which undertakes maritime operations have now been equipped with Underwater Locating Beacon (ULB). Parliament was told in a written reply by the Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre. This move comes after taking into consideration, the accident of AN32 plane which continuous to be missing and alleged to have been crashed in the Bay of Bengal on July 22nd last year. Radar contact with the aircraft was lost at 9:12 am, 280 kilometers (170 mi) east of Chennai.

ULB was absent in the missing plane which made search operations difficult. The ULB usually remains integrated with Flight Data Recorder in the cockpit. Once an aircraft goes underwater, the device starts transmitting signals at ultra-low level frequencies which can travel through water. These can be tracked by submarines and other underwater vessels for over a month. Most modern aircraft, including those in the IAF inventory and commercial aircrafts have the device installed in them. The missing AN-32 had two Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs) such that, one in the tail fin and the other in the cockpit. The battery life of these two devices does not exceed 72 hours.

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Moreover, unlike a ULB, the ELT does not function underwater because of the ultra-high frequencies signal transmitted by it. The total duration of the search operation has crossed 300 days which involved a total of Indian Navy ships, 8 Indian Coast Guard Ships and 1 submarine. In addition, 14 Indian Navy aircraft, 10 Indian Air force aircraft and 6 Indian Coast Guard aircraft were deployed for the search operation wherein 290 sorties were flown which totalled to approximately 1280 hours of flying.

US and Russian Navy were also involved in this search operation. NRSC, Hyderabad was requested for high-resolution satellite image of the area around Datun. The Indian Air Force aircraft AN32 was on a routine sortie from IAF Station Tambaram in Chennai to Port Blair Andaman and Nicobar Islands which went missing at 12.25 PM on July 22 approximately 150 nautical miles East of Chennai. 29 passengers on board and all are missing. The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad was requested for high resolution satellite image of the area around Datum. Indigenous satellites such as CARTOSAT 2A and 2B which have a resolution of 0.8m were also used for satellite imagery.

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No concrete evidence has emerged with respect to missing aircraft. There were twenty-nine people of which six were crew members, eleven Indian Air Force personnel, two Indian Army soldiers, one from the Indian Navy and one from the Indian Coast Guard and eight were defence civilians working with Naval Armament Depot (NAD). All the eight civilian passengers were from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The search and rescue operation of AN32 became the India's biggest search operation for a missing plane on the sea in the history. On 15 September 2016, the search and rescue operation was called off and all 29 passengers on board were presumed dead and their families were informed.

About the Author: Somnath Sarkar belongs to Kolkata. He has cleared his SSC exam 2015 and got service as per his choice. He always want to serve the nation through Indian Army and is preparing for the same. H loves listening songs and enjoy playing football.