India's Airforce

[Sandeep]

Anyway, the only planes taht are falling out of the sky are the MiG-21s. The MiG-21s are from the 1960s and they have been in service with the IAF for a very long time. As they get older, their mechanical quality deteriorates, so they start failing in the sky. the IAF has been upgrading them to MiG-21 Bisons. The MiG-21 Bisons have not had any mechanical failures so far and they have proven to be very effective. In an air excercise with 4 US F-15Cs, according to a US pilot, a MiG-21 Bison took out both of his wingmen before they were able to notice it on radar and it took him out shortly after.

Not just MIG-21 others like Jaguar, MIG-23, Antonov-32, MIG 27 are also crashing. And most crashes have been blames at negligence in maintanence and not pilot error. Even the airforce chief has blamed HAL for poor quality of maintanence.

The problems in the LCA and Arjun programs have been fixed and the IAF plans to Induct LCAs before 2010.

Yes LCA will be out in 2010 after 19 years of delay.

The army has only purchased around 150 Arjun Tanks. It has not purchased more because they are expensive(they cost twice as much as the T-90) and they do not fit with the Indian war doctrine.

Exactly my point. We indeginiously develop a tank that doesn't fit our "war doctrine" and that also twice costlier that a much better T-90. All this when India is known for lower production costs. After all T-90 is Russian not Chinese.

[HindustaniLadka]

f\From the data i've seen, the MiG-21 have crashed much more frequently than the others. The MiG-23, Antonoc and MiG-27 have only crashed a few times and that is not something that is compeletely unexpected. Even the US Airforces F-16s and F-18s have had just as many crashes as the MiG-23s, 27s and the Antonov-32.
As replacement for these old aircraft, i was hoping the IAF would purchase more Mirages and Rafales, but that seems somewhat unlikely now because things are not going well with the French. America offered to give India customized version of the F-16C and F-18E/F Superhornet plus the coproduction rights and all the parts and supplys. If the US keeps its offer, i think India should go with the F-16s and F-18s. These American planes will benefit the airforce in many ways, they will provide the IAF with new advanced technology, new weapons and more flexibility.

The LCA and Arjun programs were delayed mainly because of US sanctions, today, the sanctions have been lifted and the versions that exist today are up to date. I don't know about the usefulness of the LCA(i think the government should have purchased more Mirage-2000s instead of funding the LCA program), but i think teh Arjun has a lot of potential. Based on its specifications, it is comparable to the US M1 tank and it can be very effective in the battle field. It has very heavy armour, powerful weapons and it is capable of performing in any environment. The Indian war doctrine can be easily modified to include the tank. The inclusion of heavy tanks in the Indian army will render many of the tanks in the Pakistani army useless(msot of the Paksitani tanks are light tanks that are basically reverse manufactured T-55s with Chinese turrets). If the army does not want to induct the Arjuns, i think it should purchase Israeli Merkava tanks since hey are combat proven and they fit into the Indian war doctrine.