The first Phalcon was inspected by top Indian defence officials who came to Jerusalem to check the specially modified Russian IL-76 aircraft and set May 18 as the delivery date.
"The other two aircrafts would be delivered by mid or late 2010, if everything goes on schedule," defence sources said in Jerusalem on Thursday.
The delivery of the aircraft bought at a whopping price $ 1.1 billion is running almost a year and a half behind schedule. As per the tripartite deal between India, Russia and
Israel, the aircraft should have been delivered by the end of March this year.
India and Israel are reported to be in advanced negotiations for the purchase of three more Phalcon AWACS, which the IAF proposes to integrate with other air and ground assets.
All the six AWACS would be linked with the country's first military satellite proposed to be launched by mid next year, sources said.
The Phalcons will be mounted on the Russia delivered Ilyushin-76 aircraft and the technical difficulties involved in integrating the whole system is said to have contributed a good deal to the delay.
The surveillance system will provide the IAF with intelligence inputs, helping it to maintain air superiority, improve strike capabilities and conduct tactical surveillance deep into neighbouring countries without violating their airspace.
It is an all weather system capable of logging 60 targets simultaneously and has a range of 400 Km.
The United States had earlier pressurised Israel to cancel a similar deal with China in 2000 but gave green light to the deal with India in May 2003.
Israel has recently emerged as India's largest supplier of defence equipments and with the country's weapon sales to New Delhi constituting about 50 per cent of its exports.
