| Continued: |
| Going by accident-sortie ratio, the MiG-23 has been less safe than the MiG-21. Both MiG-23 and MiG-27 are being overhauled and partly upgraded by the Air Force at Nashik. Krishnaswamy admits that some engine-related problems have been encountered in some of the MiG-23s and MiG-27s, though there has been no problem with their airframes. The main reason for MiG-21 accidents, including the one that killed Abhijit Gadgil, according to the Air Force, is pilot error. If 14 of pilot-error accidents were caused by training-related human error in the last five years, environment-related errors led to four crashes, and take-off or landing time errors caused seven. Training-period accidents can be reduced only with the induction of an advanced jet trainer (AJT) which the IAF has been demanding since 1985 and is yet to get. In the absence of an AJT, pilots who have been trained on Kirans which take off at 200 kilometers per hour are next put into MiG-21s which have a take-off speed of 340 kmph. (An AJT falls in between with 245 kmph, thus acting as a bridge between the two.) The gravity pull then goes up to 9G, whereas the human body can tolerate only 4 to 5G. The anti-gravity suit takes care of 1G, but the rest has to be overcome through constant training. As Air Marshal S.K. Dham, director-general medical services (air), said recently, "All pilots face disorientation and some may have gravity-related loss of consciousness. "There are many in the services who believe that the campaign against MiG-21 began in the mid-1990s after the IAF decided to upgrade 125 of the Bis variety, and use them till at least 2015 when light combat aircraft Tejas would be available in bulk from Hindustan Aeronautics. This decision poured cold water on the plans of many foreign plane-makers to sell multirole planes in bulk to India. "We should not take decisions under pressure, we may end up paying more money," said an officer who suspects that the British hiked the price of Hawk when the IAF put pressure on the ministry to get the AJT. The only time the Air Force had doubts about the reliability of the MiG-21 was when there were two unprecedented incidents of flame-out in the R-25 engine of the otherwise reliable MiG-21 Bis. This happened when un-upgraded Bis planes, except those needed for operations in the stand-off with Pakistan, were grounded and checked before being allowed to fly again. IAF officers privately admit that lack of spare parts had been a major cause of accidents, especially in the mid-1990s. The MiG-21s are no longer built in Russia and when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a major problem. It has more or less been solved by partly indigenising the unavailable spares, and by scouting the world market. Air officers recall how they spotted a critical valve in the Dubai godown of a Singapore vendor who had collected all the nuts, bolts, valves and caskets from the Soviet factories and was selling them at 50 to 100 times the price of the original. The latest on the MiG front is that the IAF had bought a few second-hand MiG-21 trainers from Kyrgystan and Ukraine, one of which crashed in Kashmir. The IAF main-tains that the planes were bought as there was a shortage of trainer versions. And, as an officer put it, "You don't buy Mirages to train MiG pilots." |
 |
| View & Post Comments |