Indian Army gets deliveries of 20 Swedish advanced avalanche rescue systems

New Delhi: Indian Army has got deliveries of 20 avalanche rescue systems from a Swedish firm this month. This comes after nearly two years when it placed an order for the equipment as an emergency procurement according to media reports published today.
A News18 report quoted defence sources to claim that each of the rescue systems will be sent to different sector stores of the northern command.

Till now, only the High Altitude Warfare School (HAWS) at Gulmarg had a limited number of rescue systems that were procured last year after successful trials.

This is the first time that the army has procured an advanced avalanche rescue system, a requirement that was long pending in the backdrop of a large number of soldiers getting killed in avalanches and landslides that have taken place in the last few years in the Siachen glacier and other high-altitude areas of Kashmir and the Northeast.
The army has deployed basic avalanche victim detectors with ground-penetrating radars, but the advanced systems have the added advantage of transponders that makes detection faster, the sources said.

The 20 avalanche rescue systems were an emergency procurement in 2020 and sources say that the avalanche which killed two Army personnel in Sikkim in May 2020 prompted the move. As per the report, the rescue systems provided by the Swedish firm Recco will have 150 transponders each.

As per the company's website, the detector of the rescue system emits a radar signal that on hitting the reflector is echoed back to the detector, thus pointing the rescuer in the direction of the victim.

The reflectors, the website states, are lightweight and passive transponders, comprising a diode and antennae, which do not require power or activation to work.

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