NEW DELHI, 9 September 2003 — Less than a minute after the young air force officer roared into the sky on a moonless night, his fighter jet crashed into the Indian desert — like dozens of India’s aging military jets had crashed before.
That night in September 2001, Flight Lt. Abhijeet Anil Gadgil became yet another casualty of India’s combat jet program, which combines second-rate pilot training with a fleet of Soviet-made MiG-21 aircraft that some critics say are outmoded.
“On that fateful moment, witnessed only by the mute and dark desert of Rajasthan, our world stopped spinning,” his mother wrote on her website. She said her 27-year-old son had been “killed by his own government.”
Kavita Gadgil has since launched a campaign to ensure greater safety on MiG-21 jets. She has taken her case to the Indian president, pleading with him to intervene.
But while at least 52 Indian air force pilots have been killed in more than 100 crashes of MiG-21s in the past six years, the jets are often not to blame, the government says.
Human error, the official reason given for Gadgil’s death, accounts for a majority of the MiG crashes — along with such things as technical defects and birds clogging up the engines.
Growing concern over the frequent MiG crashes comes as New Delhi tries to broaden its status as a regional power and flex its military muscle.
Though air force officials insist morale remains high among the fighter pilots, others doubt it.
“I can only commend the air force for keeping its morale high — if it really is,” said Satyabrata Chaturvedi, an opposition member of Parliament. “When the mother of a pilot goes to the president seeking redress, it means she has no trust in the country’s defense minister.”
But things may be changing.
Last week, the Indian Cabinet cleared a $1.3 billion deal to buy 66 British Hawk training jets. Aviation experts say the Indians’ high rate of crashes is, in part, due to lack of proper training jets.
Gadgil, who believes her meeting with the president expedited a decision, said: “Our movement for air safety is going forward. This is a good beginning.”
The government says the MiGs are fine, and that age has little to do with safety. Defense Minister George Fernandes flew in one of the aging jets last month and said it flew well. “If it is flown the way it should be flown, nothing can go wrong,” said Wing Cmdr. N. Harish, who flew Fernandes.
There are no official statistics on the size of India’s air combat fleet, but defense analysts put it at 800. Nearly half are MiG-21 jets, most of them introduced between 1969 and 1976. Others include the French Mirage, British Jaguar, Russian-made Sukhoi and modern MiG variants.
Indian pilots are trained on slow-moving trainers, then suddenly graduate to fly the faster and more complicated MiG-21s, said Nick Cook, an aviation consultant at the London-based Jane’s Defense Weekly.
“It is essential for air forces around the world to match the trainer aircraft to your combat aircraft,” Cook says.
But in India, plans to do that have been dogged by bureaucratic delays, hectic lobbying and allegations of corruption.
The Hawk deal, which was in negotiation for over a decade, “fulfills one of the long-standing needs of the air force. ... The induction of the (advanced jet trainer) will improve the skill levels of our pilots,” said Ajai Prasad, a top Defense Ministry official.
Plans to buy training jets were also delayed by sanctions imposed after India’s 1998 nuclear tests.
Indian pilots will still have to wait for three years before they get their first Hawks.
Meanwhile, the air force says a three-year program with Russia to upgrade MiG-21s is showing results. The entire fleet is likely to be upgraded by 2005.
The crash rate for Indian fighter jets has declined to seven per 100,000 hours of flying, from more than nine in the 1990s, according to the air force.
That rate is still higher than many Western nations. For NATO countries, the average crash rate was 4.5 for every 100,000 hours in 2002.
Even with the upgrades, the government will eventually phase out the older jets. But it can take up to 15 years to procure new fighter aircraft and budgetary constraints may prevent a large-scale fleet replacement, said Cook, the analyst at Jane’s.
Money doesn’t seem to be the issue in India. Large sums earmarked for defense go unspent every year. Unable to close deals, the Defense Ministry could not spend nearly 240 billion rupees ($5 billion) from the money it was allocated to spend in the past three years.
Fernandes blames the opposition in Parliament for delays in India’s military modernization, saying its frequent allegations of corruption have slowed spending.
He quit two years ago after journalists broadcast footage of ruling coalition and Defense Ministry officials taking large cash bribes for a fictitious defense deal. He denied involvement and was reinstated months later.
But the opposition won’t accept him as the defense chief until a judicial commission probing the bribery charges clears him. They have since leveled more allegations of irregularities in military purchases.
Fernandes says these have “created a situation where no officer (in the Defense Ministry) is ready to risk a decision on any deal.”