new delhi indias political and economic capitals now have a new kind of air cover under a somewhat hushhush project heliteli iaf has deployed a specialized helicopter each at new delhi and mumbai to beam live the action on the ground during terror strikes or urban warfare sources said the two russianorigin mi17 1v helicopters are equipped with advanced flir forwardlooking infrared imaging systems and ccd chargecoupled device sensors to enable live streaming video footage from the scene of an incident to command and control centres on the ground they are basically meant for reconnaissance and surveillance duties during crisis situations like what happened during the 2611 terror strikes in mumbai or the parliament attack in delhi before that said a source live aerial feeds will make it possible to launch swift and welldirected countermeasures to threats emerging on the ground the aim as with our radar systems that are geared towards aerial threats is to reduce the reaction time or shorten the sensortoshooter loop he said the heliteli concept is not new it is used by several police forces around the globe for airborne patrols traffic and crowd control car chases and the like indian police forces however are not as yet equipped with such technology to keep an eye on the cities or towns under their jurisdiction the indian heliteli project geared towards tackling terror and urban warfare rather than conventional law and order duties is likely to be extended to other major cities in the future the force in fact is already looking to acquire more imaging systems and sensors that can also be fitted on the smaller cheetah and chetak helicopters iaf incidentally has begun to get deliveries of the 80 new mi17 v5 helicopters which are also weaponized for combat operations it had ordered from russia for 134 billion in 2008 a followon contract for 59 more mi17s is now on the anvil during last years commonwealth games iaf had deployed a couple of israeli searcherii uavs unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance over new delhi some delhi police personnel were even trained to interpret the realtime imagery being beamed from the spy drones to detect threats in time but helicopters equipped with the latest flirccd sensors and thermal imagers are considered better suited for this role india has also taken some steps to strengthen air defence networks over several cities to tackle rogue aircraft since the 911 alqaida strikes in the us in 2001 which range from integration of military and civilian radars to deploying additional surfacetoair missile squadrons but much more remains to be done