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New offensive against killer Indian
jets
By Raju Bist
MUMBAI -
The son of a former military pilot, he was a flight
lieutenant in the Indian Air Force (IAF). He was only
27, and he had just been married.
Abhijit Gadgil
was on a routine sortie in his MiG-21 on the night of
September 17, 2001. Just 33 seconds after takeoff from
runway number 5 of the Suratgarh air base in the north
Indian desert state of Rajasthan, his plane stalled. The
MiG plunged down at 470 kilometers per hour, straight as
an arrow, digging a massive hole into the sand as it
disintegrated on impact.
Gadgil's instantaneous
and tragic death would have made a poignant human
interest article anywhere else in the world. But this is
India, where 120 young pilots of the IAF have died in
290 non-combat accidents over the past decade, most of
them involving Russian-made MiG planes. The monetary
loss for the IAF on account of these accidents is well
over Rs12 billion (US$258 million).
In the past
three years alone, 48 MiGs have crashed while on
training flights. In most of the cases, the pilots have
died. There have also been cases where the pilots have
managed to bail out, but the fighter planes have
plummeted into thickly-populated areas, killing innocent
civilians. In the latest accident, a MiG-21 fighter jet
crashed in Rajasthan, killing the pilot, in early June.
So immunized by a sense of deja vu, news editors
of major Indian publications buried the Gadgil story -
as they have subsequent accidents - in the inner pages.
Two months later, two more IAF pilots, Naresh Dogra and
A K Chauhan, were killed when their MiG-21 crashed into
a tea estate in the east Indian state of West Bengal. It
was the 22nd IAF crash that year. It took place within a
week of a meeting convened by India's Defense Minister,
George Fernandes, at the air headquarters in New Delhi
to "get to the root of the problem" following the
frequent crashes. The Indian public has not been told
what happened at, or after, the meeting. Of course,
defense officials took recourse behind the oft-used
shield of "classified security information".
Over a period of time, numerous governmental
meetings and committees have purportedly gone into the
causes of the crashes and recommended solutions. The
most famous of these was in 1997 - the Committee on
Fighter Aircraft Accidents, headed by present Indian
president, A P J Abdul Kalam, who was then scientific
adviser to the defense minister. The committee pondered
the issue at length and its recommendations mainly
related to modernization of test equipment, better
information networking between the ministry and the labs
and transfer of design information on critical fighter
jet parts. But it is not known if any action was taken
on the basis of the recommendations.
But now,
Abhijit Gadgil's untimely death has come to haunt the
IAF's top brass. His mother, Kavita Gadgil, recently
launched the Abhijit Air Safety Foundation (AASF)in the
Versova suburb of north Mumbai. The foundation aims to
create a platform on which Indian citizens can unite to
fight for better safety standards in the IAF. The AASF
has drawn up a number of steps asking for specific
actions to be taken by citizens, including even those
whose families that have not been directly affected by
the crashes. It then plans to lobby the Indian
government, starting with the president.
The
movement spearheaded by the AASF is asking some
uncomfortable questions: Why are these crashes so
frequent? What is the IAF doing to minimize the chances
of such catastrophes? Why are the families of deceased
pilots not treated better? What is the truth behind the
airworthiness of the MiG-21s? Is the government of India
adequately concerned with protecting the lives of its
IAF pilots, especially those of junior officers in
training?
Says Kedar Gadgil, Abhijit's elder
brother, "This fight is about honor. The honor of a dead
hero and the honor of the country he served. We plan to
initiate action against the Indian government for
negligence that caused Abhi's death and has taken the
precious lives of hundreds before him and many more
since then. How many more before the government wakes
up?"
Public response has so far been
overwhelming. Lawyers from all over the country have
offered free legal help to fight court cases, if needed.
The Gadgils have received hundreds of phone calls,
letters of support and e-mails. Many of them are
encouraging, even poignant.
"I happen to be a
father whose son is a part of this infamous list of
MiG-21 crashes," e-mailed 67-year-old Balkrishan
Ahluwalia. "Till date I have not been told what exactly
happened on the fateful night of October 18, 1994." It
is a colossal loss to the country if it keeps losing
young promising pilots, feels B S Ganesh. "It has become
a practice for the government to conduct 'enquiries' and
then blame the dead so that there can be no defense. I
hope officers in the IAF strengthen Kavita Gadgil by
giving her all the necessary information."
Abhishek Gupta is livid. "Why is a MiG crash so
synonymous with India only?" he asked. "No action seems
to have been taken. MiGs have been crashing for years
now. No one really cares!" R Krishnan, pursuing his
education in the US, suggested boycotting the defense
forces. "Indians are a most insensitive people. We all
should take a pledge never to send our sons to the
defense forces to protect these people."
Kavita
Gadgil has now decided to embark on a tour to meet her
supporters and collect their signatures. "I will speak
publicly to make more people aware that India is
needlessly losing valuable financial as well as trained
human resources in MiG crashes during peacetime
operations. My first task is to make the IAF admit there
is a problem with the fighter jets," the bereaved mother
has been quoted as saying.
There are three
variants of the jet under a cloud. The MiG-21FL entered
service in the late 1060s. The MiG-21M was inducted in
the 1970s. The latest version is the MiG-21BiS (now
re-named "The Bison") which has been in operation since
the 1980s. Most of the accidents involve the MiG-21FLs.
According to one estimate, the IAF loses one MiG every
2,500 flying hours or so, making it the most vulnerable
aircraft in service anywhere on the globe.
"The
main problem with the MiG-21s is that they are aging and
have outlived their utility," said defense analyst Ashok
Subramaniam. "They are very weighty planes and in the
hands of inexperienced trainee pilots, become flying
coffins. That is because the trainees are made to jump
directly form the subsonic Suryakiran Mark-II aircraft
to the supersonic MiG-21 fighters."
The total
absurdity of a situation where pilots are trained on
subsonic aircraft and then assigned to aircraft that fly
at supersonic speeds is something that has been pointed
out time and again. A comparison between the attributes
of the two planes is very telling. The Suryakirans have
a take-off speed of about 180 kilometers per hour (kph)
and the MiG-21s, 350 kph. The former has a maximum
cruise speed of 660 kph, while in the case of the MiG it
is 780 kph. Most importantly, while the Suryakiran has a
landing speed of just 170 kph, in the MiG-21 it is
almost double that.
But Defense Minister
Fernandes dismisses the scathing description of the
planes as "flying coffins" as well as a growing demand
for grounding them. "The MiG 21 is the mainstay of
Indian air defense," he asserted recently before
parliament. "Its worthiness and efficacy had been proven
over the years. Contrary to public perception and what
is being published in the Indian media, the usefulness
of MiGs has been established more now than when it was
introduced 35 years ago. Every effort is being made to
reduce the rate of accidents and provide better training
to the fighter pilots."
In a written reply
presented to parliament, Fernandes said that the root
cause for the accidents was human error, technical
defects and bird hits. The bulk of accidents (38
percent) were due to human error, followed by technical
defect (37 percent). The majority of human error
accidents, he noted, "are caused due to error of skill,
judgment, poor airmanship, non-compliance of
instruction, lack of situational awareness, etc".
In tandem with his views is former air chief
marshal A Y Tipnis. "New mistakes are seldom made. In
most MiG-21 crashes, pilots repeat their mistakes," he
said recently. "The MiG-21 is a very unforgiving
aircraft. Unlike a newer Mirage-2000 or even a Jaguar,
where a pilot can fall back on four levels of safety
measures, in a MiG-21 there is no scope for additional
safety measures. It requires high skill to fly the
aircraft and experienced pilots handle it better," he
added.
But Kedar Gadgil refuses to buy this
theory. "The IAF branded Abhijit's sacrifice for his
nation as 'pilot error' and took away even his right to
die with honor, perhaps the only thing of value to a
soldier," he says. "We have not been shown a copy of the
inquiry findings or allowed to challenge it in a court
of law. In fact, we have been consistently and
deliberately stonewalled. Abhi had more than five years
of flying experience on the MiG-21. He was cleared for
day-night/all-weather operations and was a two aircraft
leader."
One theory doing the rounds is that
incorrect spare parts are causing the MiG crashes. This
opinion was reinforced when first deputy general of the
MiG Corporation, Vladimir Barkovskiy, told reporters on
the sideline of the Aero India 2003 air show early this
year: "We cannot bear responsibility for spare parts
sourced from other suppliers in Eastern Europe. Only MiG
Corporation and Rosoboronexport in Russia are certified
suppliers of MiG aircraft parts."
Now, the
common public is getting into the act, trying to use the
judiciary to get some response from the IAF and the
government. Common Cause, a non-government organization,
in a public interest litigation (PIL) filed in the Delhi
High Court, said that the MiG-21s of the IAF had become
vintage aircraft as their technology dated back to the
1950s. This, said the PIL, had resulted in a high rate
of technical failure and crashes. The court has asked
the government to look into the points raised in the
PIL, which has sought directions to restrain authorities
from using the MiG-21 in its present form.
If
the majority of the accident victims are trainee pilots,
then why does the IAF not move them on to easier
training aircraft? Therein lies the rub. Migration to a
less difficult plane can be possible only through two
routes: acquiring one from a foreign country, or
manufacturing one on your own. In India, unfortunately,
both the routes are beset with their own peculiar set of
problems.
The MiG-21 is used to train young
pilots because it's the cheapest aircraft and has the
largest fleet in the cash-strapped IAF. Nearly half of
the IAF comprises MiG-21 aircraft, and these will be
operational until around year 2010. "If we had our way,
we would train our fighter pilots on Mirage 2000s. But
we have only two squadrons [around 44] of Mirages. The
loss of a Mirage would hurt the IAF more than the loss
of a MiG-21," said a Defense Ministry official.
According to the IAF, it makes more economical
sense to upgrade the latest version, the MiG-21BiS, than
to buy a new trainer aircraft from a foreign country.
The total upgrade of the entire 125-strong fleet is
expected to cost over Rs 30 billion, which works out to
about Rs 240 million per jet. But a two-seater British
Hawk is available off-the-shelf for Rs 800 million, and
the American F-16 is priced at twice the cost. The
French Mirage is much more expensive, at Rs 1.75
billion.
The IAF feels that since most MiG-21BiS
aircraft have completed less than 1,900 hours of life,
they can be exploited for 1,500 hours or more.
Therefore, by extensive upgradation, the aircraft can
last for more than 15 years. In fact, a Rs 12 billion
Indo-Russian program for upgrading 125 MiG 21s with
improved avionics and weapons systems has already been
signed. The upgraded planes will also incorporate
American and Israeli components.
To give them
credit, the IAF top brass have been thinking of having
their own trainer. They have all along pleaded with the
government for one. Delhi, in turn, has directed
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the public sector
armaments factory, to produce one. HAL says that it is
diligently working on a light combat aircraft. But then
it has been saying this for the past two decades.
The main reason for the delay has been the
reluctance of Western powers to pass on the requisite
technology needed for the light trainer craft. But there
is also one school of thought that insists that the
delay has been caused by bureaucratic impediments put up
by the powerful lobby of importers dealing in MiG spare
parts.
Whatever the reason for the delay, it is
only contributing to the increasing number of young men
tumbling down from the Indian skies. Member of
parliament Suresh Kalmadi last month issued a press
statement blaming the delay in induction of a jet
trainer for the rising number of IAF plane crashes.
Kalmadi, a former IAF pilot, pointed out, "Defense
Minister Fernandes had said in parliament that the whole
process would be completed by December 2000. The
deadline is over and the trainer plane is nowhere in
sight."
Relax, says the government, and
announces a new date: HAL will definitely deliver an
indigenous training aircraft within three years. Until
then, every time a young IAF pilot steps into the
cockpit of a MiG-21, he will know that he has a
statistically high chance of dying.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact content@atimes.com for
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