Indian Air Force (IAF)

Titlu: Why Indian Pilot Training Is So Dangerous
Sursa: http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-india-defense-news-why-indian.html
Autor: DTN News - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Strategy Pages
Data: 02.01.2012

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Why Indian Pilot Training Is So Dangerous

Analysis: Internationally, a project for one year takes ten fold longer in India. Decisions are taken at a snail pace and time is wasted on unneccessary red tape bureaucracy. Defense procurement system is politically corrupt, as an example urgently needed Hawk Mk132 advanced jet trainers for Indian Air Force, which took 30 odd years to acquire at the cost of hundreds of young Indian Air Force pilots life. India is the largest democratically governed country in the world as is an examplery system for other nations to follow suit, but at the same time the system is a curse with too many voices and noises, NO ACTION. India should have for some period a system of administration similar to China, which is straightfoward with no two way decision making that would benefit for the betterment of the country at large. (DTN Defense-Technology News)

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 2, 2012: The Indian defense procurement bureaucracy has struck again. Despite over a decade of pressure from the Indian Air Force to obtain new trainers, new basic flight training aircraft have still not been obtained. As a result, trainee pilots are only getting 25 hours of flight time before going off to train on a specific type of aircraft (fighter, transport, helicopter). These trainees are supposed to get 75 hours before moving up to the advanced trainers and service aircraft. This problem has been building for years.

For example, back in 2009 the Indian Air Force shut down its acrobatics team, so that the aircraft they use (which are basically trainers) could be transferred to pilot flight training units, which were desperately short of flyable trainer aircraft. India's fleet of training aircraft is quite old and increasingly prone to breakdowns and crashes.

India has long put off buying new trainers. There are actually three different trainer aircraft types pilots use during their training. The HPT-32 is used for primary flight training. Intermediate training uses the Kiran Mark II and then the Hawk Jet Trainer is used for advanced training for fighter pilots. After that, the pilots are sent to combat units where they learn how to operate a specific type of combat aircraft. But in 2009, all 116 HPT 32 basic trainers had to be grounded because of age related problems. HPT reliability has gone done even more since then. The HPT 32 entered service three decades ago, and there have been over a hundred serious accidents, killing 23 instructor and trainee pilots. Because of the HPT 32 problems, the 96 Kiran Mk1 intermediate trainers had to increasingly be used for both basic and intermediate training. These aircraft are being worn out, but even then, most pilot trainees are only getting a third of the required hours before being moved along in their flight training.

The air force has finally received permission to buy 75 Pilatus PC 7 single engine turboprop trainers to replace the HPT 32s. While the HPT-32 was designed and manufactured in India, the Swiss Pilatus is seen as a better buy. The PC 7 is a two seat, 2.7 ton aircraft. The instructor sits behind the trainee and both have an ejection seat. Nearly 500 PC 7s have been built in the last three decades and they are used by 24 nations.

India has also had problems with advanced trainers. For a long time, new pilots went straight from propeller driven trainer aircraft to high performance jets like the MiG-21. This was made worse by the fact that the MiG-21 has always been a tricky aircraft to fly. This resulted in a high loss rate from peacetime accidents. The solution to this was a new jet trainer. But it took decades for this proposal to make its way through the defense procurement bureaucracy.

Three years ago, India decided to buy another 40 British Hawk jet trainers. Seven years ago, after two decades of effort, BAE Systems finally sold 66 Hawk jet trainers to India, at a cost of some $25 million each. The delays were caused by the Indian unwillingness to spend the money, plus the efforts of French, Russian, Czech, and American aircraft manufacturers to put forward their own candidates. Finally, the growing number of Indian MiG-21 aircraft lost forced the government to close the deal. The Hawk advanced jet trainers are the most successful Western aircraft of this type, at least in terms of sales (over 900 have been sold). The US Navy uses the Hawk and India felt the Hawk was the most suitable for training MiG-21 pilots. The nine ton aircraft are used to train pilots who will eventually fly jet fighters. The Hawk can also be armed and used for ground attack.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Strategy Pages
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com
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Titlu: The Rafale Selected To Power The Indian Air Force
Sursa: http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-india-defense-news-why-indian.html
Autor: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Dassault Aviation
Data: 31.01.2012

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The Rafale Selected To Power The Indian Air Force

Following the announcement of the final selection of the Rafale program MMRCA, Dassault Aviation and its partners are grateful to the Indian authorities and people of India to give them the opportunity to continue to strengthen their partnership history. Dassault Aviation and its partners reaffirm their commitment to meet the operational needs of the Indian Air Force and recall their pride in contributing to the defense of India for over a half century.

About DASSAULT AVIATION With over 7500 military and civilian aircraft delivered for nearly 60 years in 75 countries and have made ​​nearly 20 million flight hours, Dassault Aviation has an expertise and a recognized experience in the design, development, sale and support of all types of aircraft, the Rafale fighter to the family of business jets upscale Falcon. With its unique architectural complex airborne systems, Dassault Aviation is able to make strategic, operational solutions and innovative approach to efficient cooperation.

As part of a phased approach pursued for many years, its expertise in technology systems and control of airborne vectors allow users to offer optimized solutions. Finally, the pragmatic approach of the partnership has led to a vast network of cooperation with many companies, thus promoting the success of today's programs and helping to unite the defense industries of tomorrow.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Dassault Aviation
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*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com
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Titlu: Why India Chose Rafale
Sursa: http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/02/dtn-news-india-defense-news-why-india.html
Autor: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By K. P. Nayar - The Telergraph Calcutta India
Data: 06.02.2012

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Why India Chose Rafale

When Pratibha Patil travelled to Europe last October, she and others in her entourage had a pleasant surprise in the sky. At one point along the air space that the President’s flight was using, half a squadron of Eurofighters appeared on both sides of her Air India plane.

In the graceful style of these sleek war machines, they escorted the presidential aircraft to its safe landing at Patil’s next destination. Even so, those manning the Eurofighters could not resist showing off.

When the Eurofighters displayed the prowess of this advanced new-generation, multi-role combat aircraft to the President, members of Parliament and senior officials accompanying her, New Delhi’s quest for 126 planes of its kind could not have been far from the minds of their pilots.

The competition for the biggest military aviation deal in history, which began 11 years ago when the defence ministry initiated its “request for information” or RFI, had just entered its final and decisive phase.

But the impromptu decision to send the Eurofighters across European skies to impress the President was typical of what cost some rivals of Dassault Aviation — last week’s winners — the lucrative Indian Air Force contract.

It was somewhat reminiscent of Henry Kissinger’s disastrous invitation to defence minister Jagjivan Ram to visit Washington in 1971 as the sub-continent was heading into war, as recounted by Rukmini Menon, who was then joint secretary for the US in South Block.

“Why should I visit Washington?” Ram asked a non-plussed Kissinger and proceeded to tell him how American arms supplies had emboldened Pakistan to ruthlessly suppress East Pakistanis.

Partly, it was a similar approach that resulted in Boeing’s F-18E and Lockheed Martin’s F-16E being turfed out of the competition for the IAF deal earlier in the race. Not solely with the multi-role combat aircraft deal in mind, the Obama administration had made too much noise bereft of substance about the first state visit of his administration and Barack Obama’s first state dinner in honour of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

There was a time when India’s rulers could solely be influenced by gimmicks. But theatrics and atmospherics can no longer substitute hard policy options. This is one lesson New Delhi has hopefully absorbed firsthand from intense, albeit under the radar interaction with Israelis — especially in defence matters — in the last 20 years.

Then there was A.K. Antony, whom the losers in the bid for the IAF deal had not reckoned with. Antony, by nature, is averse to being the public face of decision-making. This has been the case throughout his tenure as defence minister, especially during scandals such as the Adarsh housing scam that rocked the army. Each time it was clear that the defence minister had made up his mind, but the decisions were put out as if they were taken elsewhere, along the proper channel.

Such an approach came through clearly in his most detailed statement on January 31 on the controversy about the army chief’s age. Ending months of virtual silence in the matter, Antony blamed the army for sitting on the problem for 36 years and then dealing with it in its own wisdom. So much so the army chief Gen. V.K. Singh had to agree with the minister.

Antony has maintained in public throughout that the multi-role combat aircraft acquisition process is a technical matter that would be decided by professionals in uniform. But such a public position overlooks the reality that Antony’s core support team in his ministry is much more ideological than in any other wing of the present government. Like civil servants, men in uniform are not immune from ministerial winds blowing in a particular direction.

Ideological considerations have prevented Antony from visiting Israel and from signing at least three defence agreements with the Americans which his core team views as compromising India’s strategic autonomy.

If the Russian plane on offer, MiG-35, had not clearly failed the tests, it was conceivable that it would very much have been in the reckoning. With the Russians out of the way, it did weigh with the political leadership in the defence ministry that France favours a multi-polar world and that India is a beneficiary of such an approach.

France won the bid for the entire order because it supplemented the requirements of the global tender with sweeteners that in the real world of strategic engagement, only three countries can offer India: Russia and Israel, in addition to France itself.

The collaborations that France has offered India in recent years in the field of intelligence sharing and upgrade are without parallel. Naturally, this is an area where co-operation cannot be publicised by the very nature of such engagement.

India and France face somewhat similar threats of domestic terrorism, vastly different from the threats faced by the US, Russia or even Israel. The assistance that Paris has offered New Delhi in preparing the country against such threats and the constant upgrading of their assistance went a long way towards creating an environment that favoured the French on the aircraft deal.

It was in direct contrast to Washington’s approach: the bulk of India’s intelligence community and key bureaucrats at decision-making levels believe that the Americans two-timed New Delhi on David Coleman Headley, their double agent in Chicago who played a major role in the Pakistan-supported terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008.

In addition, spread across India’s entire political spectrum that includes much of the Opposition, is a firm conviction that India would not have come out unscathed from the decision to conduct the 1998 nuclear tests if it were not for the steadfast backing that President Jacques Chirac — and Nicolas Sarkozy after him — offered India in an hour of great need.

It is not widely known that during the Kargil war in 1999, the French approved with lightning speed the adaptation of Indian Air Force Mirages in tandem with equally speedy Israeli supplies of laser-guided bombs which they delivered in Srinagar: without such French and Israeli support, India could have lost Kargil to Pervez Musharraf’s perfidy.

No honourable Indian in uniform can forget that in such a situation, the US or Britain would have probably suspended all military supplies to the combatants to prove their bona fides as honest brokers for peace.

Policies may be the result of collective decision-making in governments, but within that framework, individuals do matter. One such individual who has left a mark on Franco-Indian relations is Jean-David Levitte, whose critical role in securing the Rafale deal for his country will never become a matter of public record because of the nature of his job.

Levitte is diplomatic adviser and “Sherpa” to Sarkozy, who made amends for the temperamental mistakes during his President’s first visit to India as chief guest during Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi and organised a second trip that turned out to be one of most productive and substantive visits by any head of state to India.

Levitte was senior diplomatic adviser to Chirac too when Brajesh Mishra, the then principal secretary to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, flew to Paris as his first stop abroad seeking diplomatic support after the Pokhran II nuclear tests. Mishra found such support in Paris before he extracted reluctant support from Moscow.

Soon afterwards, Levitte became French permanent representative to the UN in New York where he led, along with Russia, a split among the five permanent members of the Security Council on the issue of punishing India through sanctions on the nuclear issue. Later he was ambassador in Washington.

Two of the countries which have been after the multi-role combat aircraft deal, the US and Britain, were at that time in the forefront of efforts in the Security Council to choke India into submission and roll back its nuclear programme.

Within the political and civilian leadership of India’s defence establishment, there has been no doubt that other things being equal, India should reward a friend in need, in this case, France.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By K. P. Nayar - The Telergraph Calcutta India
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com
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