Internal Security · Indigenous Platforms (Tejas, Arjun, INS Vikrant)
The concept being tested: Identification of Indian defence platforms.
With reference to India's defence, consider the following pairs: I. Dornier-228: Maritime patrol aircraft II. IL-76: Supersonic combat aircraft III. C-17 Globemaster III: Military transport aircraft How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?
The Dornier-228 is a light twin-turboprop operated by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard for maritime surveillance and coastal patrol, so that pairing is correct. The C-17 Globemaster III is a heavy-lift strategic transport aircraft inducted into the IAF for moving troops, armour and equipment over long range, so that pairing is correct too. The IL-76, however, is not a combat aircraft at all, let alone a supersonic one — it is a heavy subsonic military transport aircraft, the same role as the C-17, and the IAF also uses IL-76 airframes as the platform for its A-50I Phalcon AWACS. Since two of the three pairs, Dornier-228 and C-17 Globemaster III, are correctly matched while the IL-76 pair wrongly assigns it a combat role, the correct response is that only two pairs are correctly matched.
What UPSC was testing
The trap is the IL-76 entry, which borrows the word combat to sound plausible when the aircraft's actual and well-publicised Indian role is heavy transport and the airframe base for the A-50I Phalcon AWACS, not a fighter or bomber.
How often this comes up
This concept has appeared 3 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2016, 2024 and 2025.
The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.