BANGALORE, India India will pursue development of an Airborne Warning and Command System (AWACS) despite the crash this month of a prototype, official sources said here on Monday. Sources from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said the decision not to scrap the ambitious project was taken during a weekend review of the setback following the crash. "The project will be taken up after the inquiry into the crash ends," a DRDO source quoted India's chief military scientist, AP J. Kalam, as saying in Bangalore, the hub of India's aerospace industry.

The prototype, a modified Avro-748 cargo plane, crashed January 11 before it could land in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, killing four scientists from the DRDO, which is also involved in India's nuclear program. The sources here said Kalam's team was mulling whether to continue the experiments with locally-built Avros or an Ilyushin-76 transport aircraft from Russia. Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) had planned to fit the surveillance electronics on two Ilyushin-76s after completing trial runs on the Avro by the end of 1999.

(AFP)