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| Dassault Rafale Fighter (File Photo) |
By Franz-Stefan Gady
The Indian Air Force (IAF) continues to underperform.
“The Indian Air Force’s capabilities are continuing to deteriorate, despite the arrival of a government that seems ready to make big acquisition decisions,” summarizes a recently published (PDF) Jane’s Defence Weekly briefing on the current state of the Indian Air Force (IAF). Among aviation experts, the IAF has been notorious for its high accident rate in its MIG-21 fleet. For the last few years, it has also been suffering from a shortfall in the number of trained pilots. In addition, the number of combat squadrons has fallen to 34 despite an authorized goal of 42.
The report quotes a previous IHS Jane’s World Air Forces from 2006, which states that the IAF is “a competent, technology-intensive service” yet also, “in a state of flux, and force structure decision-making is complicated by politics, sensitivity to past corruption in procurement projects, conflicting budget priorities, continuing problems with indigenous systems [and] bureaucratic delays in tendering processes.” In 2015, the situation does not seem to have changed too much. According to an internal IAF assessment obtained by IHS Jane’s, the operational availability of the force for the previous three years was on average as low as 60 percent.
Read the full story at The Diplomat