Chandigarh: The formal commissioning of the first five of the 36 Dassault Rafale multifunction fighters in the Indian Air Force (IAF) at Ambala Air Force Station on 10 September was accompanied by dire splendor at a time of greatest hardship. national and military tension with China.
The five twin-engine fighters, including three two-seat trainers, who had earlier arrived in Ambala from France on July 29, officially joined the IAF’s No. 17 ‘Golden Arrows’ squadron, pampered by the Anglo-French jaguar and the Russian Sukhoi Su- 30MKI fighter jets and celebrated by acrobatic displays.
The latter involved the locally developed Tejas Mk1 Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and the IAF’s Sarang Helicopter Airshow team, which operates four locally engineered Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH), manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bangalore.
As part of the induction ceremony, a two-seat Rafale was escorted by two IAF Jaguars and two Russian Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jets, flying in an ‘arrowhead’ formation, followed by an airshow conducted by Texas. and the Sarang helicopter crew, broadcasting colored smoke.
Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly at Ambala Air Force station on September 10, 2020. Photo: Twitter / @ DefenseMinIndia
But to many IAF veterans and discerning viewers of the widely televised induction ceremony, it seemed almost as if the Generation 4.5 Rafale fighter, armed with a variety of deadly long, medium and short-range missiles and touted by the minister of defender Rajnath Singh as a regional ‘game changer’, needed defensive accompaniment.
“The whole show involving various other fighter jets and helicopters was superfluous and unnecessary,” said a retired two-star IAF officer, who did not want to be named. At this juncture where the Indian armed forces, especially the IAF, and the entire country are facing a lasting financial calamity, it is scandalous to waste money on such events, he struck down.
A representative sample of other senior IAF officials said that even if the amount spent on the air show over Ambala was limited, it could easily have been spent more profitably elsewhere, especially at a time when the country’s economy is in dire straits. depressed and sinking even further. to apocalyptic depths.
“Austerity is something the military seems to have abandoned, despite facing exhausted budgets and homelessness,” said a senior defense ministry official, who also declined to be named for fear of repercussions.
And while it is challenging to determine precisely how much the IAF would have cost to operate these supplemental platforms for the Rafale induction ceremony, rough estimates from a variety of fighter pilots put it at more than 55 lakh rupees.
Their evaluations peg the cost of operating two twin-engined Su-30MKIs and Jaguars for one hour each at around Rs 20 lakh and Rs 14 lakh, respectively. Estimates of flying the single-engined Tejas during the same period apparently cost around Rs. Rs 6 lakh, while four 5-ton twin-engine ALH, performing aerobatics, would incur an expense of around 15 lakh.
The IAF, however, was not available to provide information on these operating estimates for the rotary-wing and combat platforms that participated in the Rafale commissioning ceremony.
“The display did not add anything substantial to the induction ceremony, which was unjustified under the prevailing rigorous economic calamity brought on by the coronavirus pandemic,” said a former IAF test pilot familiar with new platform initiations over a period of 30 years. After all, he added, the Rafale was nothing more than another fighter jet being installed into service, and the carnival surrounding the event was nothing more than mere optics that are increasingly becoming the new norm for the military. from India.
Air Marshal VK ‘Jimmy’ Bhatia, one of the IAF’s fiercest and most decorated fighter pilots, who was awarded a Vir Chakra in the 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan, said it would have been more appropriate to formally incorporate the Rafale in service on the day. they first arrived in Ambala at the end of July.
However, he believes that the pomp and ceremony surrounding his formal induction were intended to convey a ‘political message’ to India’s adversaries: China and Pakistan: the IAF is ready to safeguard its territory and will not tolerate any military adventurism. or territorial. Furthermore, the program is also a ‘reaffirmation’, he stated, of New Delhi’s continuing strategic ties with Paris, and concomitantly of the IAF’s ongoing reliance on French combat platforms.
The IAF has operated French fighter jets for about 67 years. It acquired the MD 450 Ouragan (Hurricane) from Dassault, nicknamed Toofani, in 1953, followed by the Mystere IV fighter-bombers from the same manufacturers, which performed skillfully in the 1965 war. Thereafter, in the late 1970s , the IAF initiated the SEPECAT Jaguars ground attack jointly built by Brequet of France and British Aircraft Corporation of the United Kingdom, of which 118 are still in service and constitute a critical component of India’s strategic deterrence.
The Mirage-2000H (Hindustan) followed in the late 1980s, of which the IAF operates around 50 platforms, which are currently undergoing an upgrade to Mirage 2000-5 levels by increasing their avionics, armament and overall operational life. . The wired Mirage-2000Hs were competently executed during Kargil’s operations in 1999, delivering precision-guided munitions into the rugged heights of the Himalayas to destroy the Pakistani army bunkers and accelerate their retreat through the Line of Control. And, once again, these same French fighters were deployed in the February 2019 attacks on militant training camps in Balakot, in northwestern Pakistan.
The 36 Rafales, acquired for Rs 590 billion ($ 8.04 billion) followed through an Intergovernmental Agreement in late 2016, but many IAF veterans accept that their commissioning could have been more ‘subtle’, similar to relatively discrete inductions above. .
“It would have been mature and meaningful if the Rafales had been installed in a gloomy ceremony, rather than one that blatantly flaunted the capabilities of the IAF,” said a former three-star air force officer. It is always more prudent, he advised, paraphrasing the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, to be subtle to the point of formlessness and silence, because then you can be the director of your opponent’s destiny.
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