New Delhi, March 19 (IANS) Bureaucratic wrangling and turf battles between India's civilian and military intelligence agencies, exacerbated by budgetary squabbles, continue to hamper efforts to modernise the country's shadowy and highly classified Aviation Research Centre (ARC).

Run by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence agency that reports directly to the prime minister, ARC is responsible for communication and electronic surveillance along the borders with Pakistan and China.

Its assets of ageing fixed-wing transport and light aircraft like Russian IL-76s and AN-32s and General Dynamics Gulfstream III/SRA-1s and upgraded Gulfstream IV/SRA-4 jets of the US and obsolete helicopter fleet are tasked with gathering "actionable" information via airborne signal intelligence (SIGINT) operations and photo reconnaissance flights along its northern and eastern frontiers.

ARC inputs constitute the bulk of the monthly intelligence forecasts to the Indian military, particularly the army, on the Pakistani and Chinese military's order of battle and tables of organisation.

Its responsibilities also include detailing the neighbours' immediate military capabilities, organizational structure, mission essential personnel and present equipment deployment.

But there is plenty of criticism.

"The output by ARC's fleet of obsolete, lumbering aircraft fitted with outdated Western surveillance sensors and optical electronic systems that are capable of limited penetration into enemy territory remain restrictive in a real time situation," a senior military officer said, declining to be identified.

He asserted that the 44-year-old ARC's output with analogue and not digital capability diluted "immediate operational utility" and made the images and accompanying analysis "tactically unsound".

"It (ARC) also fails to provide an overall strategic landscape despite the large amounts of money lavished upon it," he added.

ARC was established in 1962 with help from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was nervous about China. RAW came up later.

ARC operates from New Delhi's Palam airport, Charbatia in Orissa and Dumduma in Assam, while its rotary wing fleet sparingly uses Chakrata bordering Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.

ARC's helicopter fleet comprises Russian MI-8s and a mix of locally built Cheetahs (locally modified French Alouette IIs) and Chetak's (Alouette IIIs), many of which are used to transport Special Frontier Force (SFF) commandos from their base at Sirsawa, 250 km north of New Delhi, for "dedicated" tasks at the behest of RAW operatives or from the Intelligence Bureau, the domestic security agency.

These involve "surgical strikes" on terrorist targets based on "pinpoint" intelligence, official sources said.

ARC's activities are to an extent supplemented by the Indian Air Force's fleet of four MiG 25s (NATO reporting name Foxbat) and Avro HS 748s and the Indian Navy's Dornier 228s.

But turf battles between the civilian and military intelligence agencies, which had intensified following feeble attempts to revamp the country's information gathering capabilities five years ago, rarely lead to close cooperation or information sharing between RAW and the military, intelligence sources said.

In the reorganisation process RAW successfully fought off moves by the army to merge ARC with its Directorate General of Military Intelligence.

The army runs its own Defence Image Processing and Imagery Centre with the ability to download images from satellites but depends heavily on RAW, the Intelligence Bureau and inputs from paramilitary forces for a "complete" picture of the border areas.

ARC's aircraft are mainly operated and maintained by IAF personnel seconded to it for limited durations. But it also has a small corps of pilots and ground crew of its own, some of which were responsible till 2000-01 for servicing and repairing the Northern Alliance's Soviet Mi 17 and Mi 35 attack helicopters in Afghanistan when it was engaged in fighting the Taliban militia.

Security and military sources, however, said ARC's limited surveillance capabilities were adversely exposed during the 11-week border war with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir's mountainous Kargil region in 1999 when its output was little better than "pretty pictures ", providing the Indian army and air force with little or no tactical input. Over 1,200 soldiers died in the skirmish, 519 of them Indian.

In the run up to the skirmish, the ARC also proved unable to the task of determining the ingress of the Pakistan Army into Indian territory stretching some 140 km along the Kargil frontier for several weeks before an Indian army detail was informed about the infiltration by a shepherd.

Besides, the military charges ARC with "restricted knowledge" of defence matters, a claim ARC strongly refutes. Security and military sources at times accuse the ARC of operating in a vacuum and producing little of operational value.

ARC's efficacy is further being challenged by the newly-created National Technical Facilities Organisation (NTFO) as part of revamping the country's intelligence structure to conduct hi-tech surveillance using satellite and computer assets besides having access to data collected by the services and other national intelligence sources.

But despite its shortcomings, ARC has had many successes. It played a vital role in the "liberation" of Bangladesh in 1971 and in the takeover of Sikkim four years later as India's 22nd state.

ARC assets were also deployed in providing security to India's highly classified nuclear programme during the 1974 and 1998 underground atomic tests in Pokhran in Rajasthan.