Chief of Air Staff, CAS, Air Marshal Adesola Amosu has asked for the acquisition of Forward Looking Infra Red Radar technology to drastically enhance the capability of the Air Force to end insurgency in the country.
Air Marshal disclosed this at a press conference as part of activities to celebrate the 51th anniversary of the Service of Nigerian Air force, NAF.
Amosu pushed for the use of Network Enable Capability (NEC), saying it will enhance the responsiveness, effectiveness and control of fighter jets and attack helicopters in counter insurgency operations.
He explained that Forward Infra Red Looking Radars which is a component of the Network Enabled Capacity, when fitted on an air craft enhances its surveillance capability and increases strike effectiveness.
Amosu explained that: “if you have that technology going, you can have it twenty four hours, the enemy most of the time will have to change positions and communicate, and within the Network Enable Capability you will be able to detect those movements and those communications.”
“So its huge, you may have few air craft, but you have one or two air craft air borne giving you all the necessary intelligence and as when necessary, you deploy air craft to challenge those movement,” he added.
Amosu stated that: “It’s kind of trading numbers for technology, we are hoping the government responds, even though the funds are not there readily.”
He also said another technology that falls within the NEC is the T129 attack helicopters the Service is trying to acquire now.
“Once the pilot is on flight with the Forward Looking Infra Red, he does not need to come back home before strike, as the enemy is being detected he gets directive to continue the strike, and makes strike easy,” Amosu noted.
“We should be in Abuja, eventually see what’s going on in Porthacourt, Lagos and Maiduguri simultaneously,” Amuso said, adding that it is huge, but achievable.
He further explained that: “the NEC is going to really change the sequence of things within the Nigerian Air Force; we are still expecting three more platforms that will be fitted with the Forward Looking Infra Red Radars.”
Amosu said despite conventional surveillance on Sambisa forest, the population of people being rescued there threw a surprise to the Service.
He however said: “if you have technology you would have noticed that this population is right there in the forest… when you have the technology you don’t need to have this sustained long operation.”
“You would have been able to identify the gathering over a period of time and would have saved a lot of resources and would have been able to bring the operation to a quick conclusion,” Amosu said.
Responding on a question on budgetary allocations to the Air Force, Amosu said when huge and necessary budgetary allocation are done there will be no need to spend on the military during crisis.
He explained that: “We did a study when we came for a period of about ten years, incrementally the armed forces will ask for maybe N20 billion, they will get N1 billion, ask for N15 billion they will get maybe N3 billion, you are already denying them the opportunity to acquire the hardware.”
Amosu said: “So the problem did not start today, if you want to quickly go to the market to do the shopping at once, it’s always difficult, they are not on the shelve.”
“We don’t want the funds; we want the funds to be made available to the manufacturers, we just pick up the equipments,” he noted.
Amosu also said advance plans have been made to sustain security in the north east by the air force even after the current battle with Boko Haram is over.
“We have already established some Forward Operations Bases (FOB) to complement the maritime end, we have one FOB in Baddagry, we have one in Mubi, we are still going to construct additional in Monguno and Bama,” he said.