Drain the Swamp- a review of the air fleet situation                            Prof. Prodyut Das

 Iss 4  16/11 2024

The Americans, who have enviable mastery over colourful language have an expression “When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remember what you had actually started out to do was to drain the swamp”. Translated into English it suggests that the pressure of immediate problems (alligators up to your arse), often as an adverse reaction to your initiatives (draining the swamp) hinder the long-term solutions. We are at this moment in a crisis with regards to Air Power.

The crisis is that due to the (planned?) failures of the ADA programmes; the IAF strength is at an all time low. The pressure is to re-equip massively by importing. Given the present situation, re-equipping with ADA offerings will remain a desert mirage. 

This crisis is an opportunity. If we can hold off any panic buying of 5^th generation on offer, we can break the cycle of “compelling circumstances” imports. If the Government seizes the moment, it can break the back of the Import Lobby, possibly forever. Otherwise, we are close to repeating History of the 1960s.

In 1960 the brilliant HF 24 Marut programme was progressing rapidly with a first flight scheduled in mid- June 1961. If de-bugged, the brilliant air frame would close down to the established vendors not only India, but also the Asian and African markets. What was done was to “inject” 12  F104A Starfighters into Pakistan. 12 F 104As in numbers and as platforms were near useless as a threat. We could have, in 1960, ignored the F 104s and focused our resources into getting the HF 24 and its engine right.  Yet Raisina made the IAF reprioritize its re-equipment plan to go in immediately for the “anti- F104” equipment. Perhaps the hope of the international bankers was we would settle for one of the quartets, viz. Lightning/Draken/ Mirage III or the F 104.The Bankers for all four industries was probably be the same or related so it did not matter what we chose. The MiG 21 was something like a joker in that pack, The story of the MiG 21is well known and apart from diverting of resources and focus on the Marut, irrelevant to our proposition. 

What is relevant is in the flurry of setting up the giant factories for the MiG 21 Raisina babus developed a remarkable anti common- sense aversion to providing the meagre 3 million GBP required for the Marut’s engines. The threat posed to the investments of the Bankers in the West by the developed Marut was averted -possibly at a ridiculously low price of college admissions for the children and holiday bungalows the proverbial twenty-four shekels of Judas. A scenario, and quite possible.

Change the nouns and we are back in 1961. Focusing on "quick Fix" and, once crisis is postponed, then ignoring the Indian options, which incidentally is not the AMCA but a re- organization of the Industry.

China knows that it will have no chance against a re-organized Indian Aviation Industry, its ploy is to re-play the 1961 supply of F 104 by supplying some 5^th generation fighters to Pakistan to divert funds and attention to the buying of something “off the shelf” F 35/ Su57/Su 75. This will destroy the local development ecology just as the Marut development was de-railed in 1961.

Now I put to you my questions. 

Are those Chinese J 35s doing the same job that the near worthless F 104As did to our long-term objectives in 1961? i.e. Diverting needed action to panic action?

Do we take the risk to call their bluff? 

How long will it take to develop our 5^th.generation by existing structure? My estimate is never -same as Tejas. How long by re-organizing the industry and more open  supervision? About 4-5 years. 

What is to be the scenario in which we will use our 5^th. Generation- I can tell you the standard 4^th.Gen. plus super cruise plus stealth plus net centric warfare specification proposed  is a pie in the sky.

 Does the IAF have a scenario for use of the proposed 5^th.Gen? 

What work has TACDE done in integrating the requested 5^th, Generation into its War Plans.

 No single person or body will have the answers. A Panchayat where all questions are raised and asked by all stakeholders including the Private sector and even private individuals is essential. 

My summary is such: The Indian Air force should be a 50-squadron air Force and it is not an unrealistic figure. Like the Elephant has two sets of teeth- one for eating and its tusks for deterrence the AF needs two levels of strength. We need the 50 squadrons not only to fight but also to deter aggression and to rebuild after a fight. This can only be done by using Indian designs with Indian engines, materials and systems which is something the present Bureaucracy controlled ecology will resist. 

In any case it won’t happen with the present set up. The Tejas Mk1, Mk1 A are failures by being not production worthy; the Mk2 will run into intake problems no matter what the CFD and Foreign Laboratories advise. The Tejas is – and you will please excuse the use of the word because I feel it is an exact one- a properly buggered programme not because the design of supersonic platforms is particularly difficult but because it was almost expertly configured to be difficult/impossible to develop as I have described elsewhere.

So what do we do? Nothing but take a deep breath and take stock. We need about five years to sort out our development problems. Let us work to give ourselves those five years. Note the following:

1.      Our development problems so endless publicized are really infantile in complexity. Infantile “mistakes” which were  allowed to happen and then feeble attempts are made to correct errors that should not have passed design review.

2.      It should no more than 3 to 5 years to rectify all the back log completely satisfactorily. We need perhaps 5 years of unconventional defence where the IAF is factored in to a limited extent..      

4.    5.      Let the Army be the lynch pin of the Northern defense relying on ground- based air defence to hold the borders. We lost 1962 not because the IAF was not used but because we lacked basic equipment. Our leaders gifted the match to the Chinese. Even in the 1962 war the hopelessly neglected and badly treated and under supplied Indian Army gave such a bloody nose that it persuaded the PLA that a cease fire and a retreat would be a good face saver. The PLA was not a local branch of the Salvation Army that it went back on its own.

6.      We need about 4-5 years to get back on the rails and defeat the very situation the purpose of the Chinese ploy – keeping the Indian Aviation Industry weak and demoralized- is forever defeated.

  Will 5 years be enough to have everything humming? Yes, because the ADA designs (Tejas and AMCA, NLCA et al) made infantile mistakes. The engine is not ready because in 2008 development was stopped just when it was ready for a breakthrough. The lack of a FTB is spoken in the same tone of injustice and  grievance as the inability after 40 years to produce a well engineered version of the vaunted Tejas.  I have discussed these elsewhere in my blog. The Tejas Mk2 is not only nothing more than what should have been actually approved in 1989 but also it is opening a can of worms as the inlet goes.. The AMCA does not augur well by the way the programme has gone about so far with  preliminary work- it is one of a Tejas culture where you want to build a "world class flat rated " engine but do not do anything about getting a simple FTB cobble together  for teh Kaveri. The repeated hamstringing of development by not planning is possibly criminal of intent.

Let me add it will require a different approach-honesty of purpose, and a drastic purge of the Charlatans. The purge is not for vendetta. It has been the experience that if the previous regime is allowed to continue, they sabotage the reforms. You will recall that when Ratan Tata took over, he purged the glittering top echelon of the previous JRD regime. It is a rite of passage.

The problem of our failed projects has been very bad seed i.e. basic fundamentally flawed  project studies from ADA and ADE. It is the starting weakness in our development programmes. This has led to delay by unnecessary corrections over years  in hardware what an eraser or a mouse click would have done in a second.