Skylord? No longer - R. Prasannan

Indian Air Force loses its edge as Pakistan and China strengthen their air power

1962: India didn't use air power; lost the war to China.
1965: Pakistan air force had newer planes and weapons; war ended in stalemate.
1971: India had overwhelming superiority and won the war.
1999: India had overwhelming superiority. Pakistan did not dare use its air force.

What can happen in the next war? If it breaks out in the next five years, even optimists fear it could end as 1965, at least in the air. Unless, of course, the Army and the Navy reverse the situation on ground and at sea, or the unthinkable weapon is brandished.
The world's fourth largest economy is making 8 per cent more money every year, but the fourth largest air force is losing its fighting edge at a faster rate. Not just to China which is building rail tracks in Tibet to carry its army divisions to India's borders and airfields closer to the border, but even to puny Pakistan which is fast modernising its air force. India always suspected that the Pakistan air chief stayed away from Kargil war because he had fewer and older planes. "As against 32 F-16s on the inventory of PAF, IAF reportedly had 45 Mirage-2000s, 20 Su-30s and 60-70 MiG-29s. This, indeed, was a formidable ratio which inhibited PAF from interfering with IAF's operations," pointed out Group Captain T.D. Joseph in a paper prepared for the Centre for Air Power Studies.
President Pervez Musharraf is now getting 30 brand-new F-16s, upgrade kits for 32 older planes, early warning capability, and beyond-visual-range missiles for his air chief. On the other hand, IAF is entering its platinum jubilee year with a massive fleet of ageing and crashing combat aircraft. Though it has brought down the crash rate from 2.04 per cent in the 1970s to 0.69 in 2004-05, IAF is compelled to retire the bulk of its fleet, with no replacement in sight.
The situation has turned grave enough for Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi to write a three-page warning to Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee. "Unless steps are taken to move ahead with procurement, IAF's combat strength will deplete to a level which would entirely neutralise the conventional superiority held by IAF since our Independence. PAF will have 19 to 26 squadrons by 2011-12, while IAF could reduce to 26.5 by 2015," wrote Tyagi.
Though unhappy about the leak of the confidential letter, which he wrote as part of "his constant dialogue with the government", Tyagi admitted that the depleting combat squadron strength "is an area of concern. Any change in the balance of power should be of concern to me as chief."
What has irked the Air Force is the long delay in issuing 'requests for proposal' to acquire 126 multirole aircraft. "It was cleared in 2001," pointed out Tyagi's predecessor S. Krishnaswamy. "We had started the process when I was assistant chief (plans). That was soon after the Sukhoi deal. Then itself we had let the government know that there would be depletion."
The Sukhoi deal, one of the fastest fructifying big-ticket deals made by India, was initiated in 1996, and IAF got the first Indian-built plane only last year. The aircraft, which can nuke any corner of Eurasia from London to Vladivostok, with Beijing and Islamabad thrown in as bonus, is the envy of even the Americans, but then it is in a class heavier than a multirole workhorse like the MiG-21. "You can't use Sukhois to bomb Kargil infiltrators, or shoot down Atlantiques," pointed out an air marshal. "MiG-21 is the only multirole aircraft we have in bulk. Then there are just the two squadrons of Mirages. Our numbers look impressive on the pages of Military Balance, but they do not reflect the real situation."
Competing plane-makers of the world have sent replies to requests for information, but the government has delayed the next step-issue of requests for proposal-for more than a year. As Tyagi pointed out, "you don't get aeroplanes overnight". Added one of his principal staff officers: "If it took us full five years to buy five executive jets off-the-shelf, you can imagine how many years it will take to get fighters in squadron strength."
The officer was referring to the purchase of five Embraer jets from Brazil. Requests for proposal were issued in March 2001 to nine vendors; seven responded; IAF shortlisted three; commercial proposals were received from them; price negotiations were conducted with the lowest bidder; contracts were signed; and the planes came off the Brazilian shelf in December 2005. "Acquiring fighters is a much more cumbersome process," pointed out Krishnaswamy. "It is not like buying vegetables from the market or even buying commercial planes."
IAF makes its acquisition plans based on present and projected future threats, and technologies that could be available in future to India and its adversaries. The plans are then projected with likely budgets available, and proposals made to government.
Thus it conveyed requirement of 126 fighters to the government, and obtained information on the well-known F-16, the costlier F-18, the proven Mirage, the under-development MiG-35, and a few rank outsiders like Gripen and Eurofighter. IAF had unofficially preferred the service-proven Mirages. Though IAF initially bought only two squadrons in the 80s, "the Mirage-2000 project has the most efficient support system infrastructure of IAF. It can well support a fleet strength of more than five squadrons," pointed out Air Chief Marshal A.Y. Tipnis [Rtd] in SP's Aviation. "Yet, this French beauty will have the dubious distinction of going down in IAF's fighter-aircraft history as the one that manned the least number of squadrons. Only after digging its heels and support from PS to PM could the Air Force get an order through for 10 additional aircraft to later equip a third squadron. More than six years have elapsed since then and the justification of that time has also elapsed."
Now it appears that Mirage may not be in the reckoning when India finally issues the requests for proposal. The French have announced that they can't wait and are closing down its assembly line. This has raised doubts among many in the service whether some forces are deliberately delaying the process to favour a competitor.
Officials in the ministry, however, say that the delay is caused by confusion about the new defence procurement policy which insists that 30 per cent of the total contract value is ploughed back to Indian defence industries. The Americans, keen to jet-land into the Indian defence market on F-16s or F-18s, are quite worked up on the offset policy. But as Krishnaswamy pointed out, "If you go for the F-16s, you have to set up a totally different infrastructure." There are also doubts about US product support promise. IAF officers point out that the US prohibited even its bosom friend Israel from installing their radar on Israeli-built F-16s.
Even if the requests for proposal are issued today, it could take three to five years to sign the contract, given the time taken for extensive trial evaluation, laborious technical talks, long-winded contract bargaining and ultimate cabinet approval. Even after the contract is signed it could take two to three years for the first few planes to arrive and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd to set up the assembly line for local manufacture.
Thus getting a full squadron strength itself could take a decade if not more, and by the time all 126 planes arrive, they would be beginning to be obsolescent. Also, it would take much longer to fully train a squadron strength of pilots in the new machine, develop tactics to exploit its capabilities, and build a service set-up.
During this anticipated time lag, IAF officers say, Pakistan will get its new F-16s and improve its electronic warfare capability. "You may say that we fly what we have till then. But I am telling you, all the numbers that we have aren't available at any given time," said Krishnaswamy. As the aircraft get older (in calendar years) or fatigued (by flying hours), it has to be in the service hangar for longer periods. "The number of parts that have to be changed increases as the planes gets older. Your brand-new car gets serviced in half a day; but an old car takes days for servicing and repairs." So, even if IAF may now have 30 squadrons, the effective availability at any given time is about 20.
Another rarely expressed concern is about the time taken to train pilots on new planes and engineers to service them. The first batches of pilots will have to be trained in the seller-country, and they will train the next batch. On the other hand, as an air marshal pointed out, "this is easier for Pakistan. Their pilots are already flying ultramodern warplanes of many Gulf countries. Even before PAF got their first F-16, a number of Pakistani pilots had mastered the machine in the Gulf. This luxury is not available to us. Some of those countries may even lend their planes to Pakistan, if the need arises. As it is, the Saudis are willing to share their AWACS with PAF."
The last medium combat jets that joined IAF were the MiG-29s and the Mirages, both of which came in the late 80s. Having been denied new planes for one and a half decades, IAF has been upgrading its older planes. Nearly 140 MiG-21 Biz planes are being upgraded as MiG-Bisons. The Jaguars and some of the MiG-23s, which have some technical life left in them, are also being upgraded. "But you are still not getting a brand-new plane," pointed out a technical officer. "The airframe and engines have absolute technical life; those can't be extended. You can only upgrade the avionics, fix a better radar and arm the plane with better weapons."
As Krishnaswamy pointed out, even this is not easy. Most of the older planes, like the MiG-23s, are of analog technology vintage, whereas all modern systems are of digital technology. So, upgrading a Jaguar, a MiG-29 or a Mirage, which use digital tech, is easier than refurbishing a MiG-23. "It can't carry a modern missile unless the whole system is converted to digital. That would be an extensive proposition. And if the plane is going to last only another decade, is it worth it?" said Krishnaswamy. The same worry is already there about the much-hyped Bisons. Even the newer of the MiG-21 Bizes that have been 'Bisoned' have just about 10 years of life left.
Equally worrying is the spares support for these planes whose assembly lines in ex-Soviet countries closed down decades ago. India has the world's largest fleet of MiG-21s, and there are five engines which are still flying only in India. "If anything goes wrong with them, there is no one in the world whom you can turn to," said an officer. Tyres are also hard to get. Each fighter plane has its own specially-designed tyres and after Dunlop closed down, Indian MiGs have been lame-ducked. Even used tyres have been imported to tide over the crisis. No tyre manufacturer would set up an assembly line to cater to a few dozen aircraft. "We have some four or five Canberras. Who would make tyres for them?" asked Krishnaswamy.
Even if all the squadrons are made available for flying at any given time, there is a problem of lack of commonness. The ideal situation is when any squadron can be moved to any forward base and asked to operate from there in war. Each type of warjet requires a different logistics and weaponry back-up. "The missiles on Mirages are different from those on MiG-29," pointed out an officer. "This limits the availability of squadrons in operations. Every forward base can't store equipment for all types of aircraft. So, only a handful of squadrons are available for operations in any given sector."
All these problems, IAF officers point out, will aggravate in the next few years till newer planes come in, and they are nowhere on the horizon. And as procurement gets delayed, technology would also change. The original qualitative requirements given by IAF would also have to be revised, delaying the process further and tilting the balance irrecoverably in favour of the enemy.
The life extension of MiG-21 Biz is a reprieve, but as Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, who heads the Centre for Air Power Studies, pointed out, "we failed to take the advantage of the grace period in spite of more funds being available, a great deal of which were being surrendered year after year during the 1999-2003 period. The result has been that our combat force level is likely to reduce to as low as 26 squadrons in the coming years, before it can start to reverse and stabilise." According to Jasjit, "we are landed with a triple challenge. That of arresting the decline in the force level, modernising the force, and raising the force level to what would be needed in the future."
The other major concern is China. The fast-paced modernisation of the Chinese air force will change the strategic dynamics in more ways than one. Though China always had overwhelming numbers, IAF had dismissed them as a rusting line-up. So, IAF had been deploying its newer aircraft in the western theatre against the comparatively modern PAF. Even the older fleet, deployed in the northern sector, was considered superior to the Chinese ware.
But the scene is changing fast. China is expected to have 400 brand-new multirole Su-27s and Su-30s, 250-odd J-10s and hundreds of upgraded F-7s by the end of this decade. Against them, what would IAF have? Just about 80 Su-30s to strike inside China, 40-odd Mirages for multirole, and 60 MiG-29s flying hard to establish air superiority. And an ageing fleet of MiGs and Jaguars to take care of brand-new Pakistani F-16s.