Bangalore, May 26 (IANS) :

India will soon send its first batch of air force pilots, engineers and instructors to Britain for training on the Hawk advanced jet trainers (AJT), which it is in the process of acquiring.

New Delhi has signed a 795-million-pound agreement with Britains BAE Systems for purchasing 66 Hawk jets for the Indian Air Force (IAF). The governments of India and Britain have signed a separate pact to guarantee the supply of the jets and related systems.

The IAF will shortlist the personnel who will undergo training in batches in Britain for handling the Hawks.

The first batch will leave for Britain in the next couple of months for training on the Hawk at the hands of BAE test pilots, Air Chief Marshal S. Krishnaswamy, the IAF chief, said here Wednesday.

The IAF is set to acquire the AJTs in a phased manner over a decade. The deal includes outright purchase of 24 Hawks and manufacturing the remaining 42 jets by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) after transfer of technology and parts by BAE Systems.

The Hawks will be based at our Bidar command station in north Karnataka for training hundreds of pilots and support personnel who graduate from stage-II to stage-III skill sets for flying fighter jets such as Sukhois, Mirages, MiGs and Jaguars, Krishnaswamy said.

Though it will be two to three years before the first batch of Hawks arrives in India, the IAF has drawn up plans to upgrade Bidar airbase, including the extension of runways, at an estimated cost of Rs.1.4 billion ($30.87 million).

In the meantime, the IAF has decided to ground about 70 MiG-21 FL training aircraft next year as they are at the end of their lifecycle.

As a result of retiring these ageing trainers, the IAF will face an acute shortage of trainer aircraft for its rookie pilots. We are in a desperate situation in the absence of AJTs, Krishnaswamy noted.

The MiG-21 jets are based at Tezpur and Bagdogara airbases in the northeast.

These trainer variant of MiGs were produced in the former Soviet Union during the mid-1960s and 1970s. They would have run their course of lifespan by next year. Hence we decided to lay them off, Krishnaswamy said.