IAF's 13 Base Repair Depot Marks Golden Jubilee in Delhi

13 Base Repair Depot of the Indian Air Force completed fifty years of service, and the milestone was marked on 15 November 2026 with a seminar at the Manekshaw Centre, New Delhi. The seminar carried the title 'Air Defence 2040: Sensors, Networks & Sovereign Sustainment' and was presided over by Air Marshal Yalla Umesh, VSM, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Maintenance Command. Senior officers, veterans, representatives of DRDO, academics and defence industry partners attended.

What the depot does

Set up in 1976, the depot is one of the mainstays of the air force's maintenance network. Its work is the repair, overhaul and life cycle support of radar and communication equipment, the kind of machinery on which air defence depends from one decade to the next. The unit traces its own beginning to the Radar and Communication Project Office, and over five decades its output has gone into keeping vital air defence systems available and dependable. In the welcome address the Air Officer Commanding of the depot went over that journey, acknowledged what its veterans had built and argued for deeper indigenous engineering and industrial strength to meet what Air Defence 2040 will demand.

Sovereign sustainment, the theme of the day

Air Marshal Yalla Umesh told the gathering that an air defence system is only as good as its availability for operations, and that the ability to keep it running must be designed in from the start rather than added after a weapon is inducted. Sovereign sustainment, as he put it, means the country can itself diagnose, repair and restore complex defence systems without looking outside. He asked industry partners to deliver equipment that comes with indigenous testing, repair and life cycle support, which is the practical side of self-reliance in defence.

Hydrogen fuel cells for radars

The seminar also recorded a first of its kind step in running radars on cleaner power: a successful demonstration of hydrogen fuel cell technology to power IAF radars, carried out with the National Green Hydrogen Mission and NTPC. Radar sites often sit in remote and difficult terrain where fuel has to be hauled in, so a fuel cell promises energy autonomy along with lower emissions, and the demonstration was presented as a pointer to sustainable deployment of air defence systems.

What was discussed

Taken together, the seminar's sessions set out what the maintenance side of the air force expects to face by 2040, and the depot's jubilee served as the occasion to state it.