Why fly 44-yr-old jets, asks IAF chief

Indian Air Force (IAF) chief B.S. Dhanoa has questioned why India is flying aircraft that are over four decades old when no one drives even cars of that vintage. He was referring to the MiG-21 fighter aircraft that had been inducted into the force in 197374. Dhanoa made the statement on India’s obsolete fleet of fighter aircraft in the presence of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at a seminar.

“The fifth-generation fighters are a reality and the next generation fighters are already on the drawing board. Can we afford a victory with such losses? If there is no war, we cannot wait for indigenous technology to replace obsolete war fighting equipment. Neither will it be prudent to import every defence equipment from abroad. Today, I can still fly the MiG 21 MF aircraft which is almost 44 years old. I’m sure none of you are driving a car of that vintage,” he said.

“Having said that, it is because, over a period of time, we have indigenised many of the sub-assemblies and innovated and have done import substitution of many components that have gone out of manufacture across the world,” he added.

In 2006, India upgraded more than 100 MiG-21 fighter jets to MiG-21 Bisons by equipping the aircraft with powerful multimode radar, better avionics and communications systems.

Defence Minister Singh said India needs to cut dependency on foreign manufacturers in defence production and, instead, develop comprehensive indigenous designing capabilities. He said India continued to be one of the largest importers of defence equipment in the world. “Of that which is produced within the country, there is a sizeable dependency on foreign original equipment manufacturers for sub-systems and components. We need to cut down dependency on foreign manufacturers and develop comprehensive capabilities ourselves,” he said.

He listed several policy initiatives taken by the government to promote indigenous production of defence equipment. The cumulative production of all defence industries in the country in 2018-19 was about INR 80,000 crore. The contribution of private sector defence industries to it was around INR 16,000 crore.