Source: Trishul-trident blog.
It has become fashionable for several retired armed forces veterans to glorify or whitewash or even refuse to acknowledge past shortcomings & deficiencies that, in reality, reduce India’s armed forces to the world’s laughing stock. Here is one such prominent example:
IAF had planned to use helicopters as primary strike weapons. But their slow speed meant they would be sitting ducks. So what did IAF do?
theprint.in
Claim: In the initial stages of the conflict, helicopters were planned to be used as the primary strike weapons against intruders housed at sangars (encampments made of rocks and boulders that could only be damaged by a direct hit.
Reality: Which IDIOT had come up with such a brain-wave? Did any other air force in the world ever even try to achieve such a feat at such forbidding altitudes? Were the 57mm or even 80mm rockets ever certified for such usage? If not, then did the IAF make any attempt to certify such firings during peacetime between 1972 & 1999?
Claim: The IAF had only about four or five CMDS kits available to be strapped on to the helicopters, and an equal number of armour plates to protect the cockpits. It was decided that the first helicopter would have both CMDS kit and armour plates, while others would have to do with some deficiency.
Reality: The utterly shameful reality is that despite all the lessons learnt from the Afghanistan civil war of the 1980s, the IAF never bothered to install CMDS kits on its vast inventories of the Canberra PR.57s MiG-21Ms, MiG-21Bis, MiG-23MFs, MiG-23BNs & MiG-27Ms. Only the Mi-25, Mi-35P, Jaguar IS/IM, Mirage-200H/TH, Su-30K & MiG-29B-12 fleets had CMDS for dispensing flares. CMDS kits should have become mandatory for installation from 1991 onwards, but this wasn’t done. Even personal locator beacons were procured in very small numbers from UK-based SARBER only after the mid-1990s & again they were not made mandatory for usage. Night-vision goggles attached to the pilot’s helmet, although well-proven during OP Desert Storm in early 19912, were never procured for armed helicopters like Mi-17. All Chiefs of Air Staff from 1991 till 1999 must be held accountable for such operational lapses.
Claim: Upon their return, they were told about the ejection of Squadron leader Ajay Ahuja, the MiG-21 pilot who had kept orbiting in search of Nachiketa: a SAM had brought down his aircraft. SAMs were being fired at each helicopter in the formation, but the CMDS flares deflected them–except for Pundir’s helicopter, the only one in the formation that did not have a CMDS. It got hit and crashed with four brave Indians on board.
Reality: Nachiketa’s MiG-23BN & the MiG-27Ms were never certified for dropping ordnance or firing their six-barrel GsH-30 cannons from such forbidding altitudes at high angles of attack. Yet why was such a suicidal attack profile authorised by IAF HQ? Why were CMDS kits not installed on those Mi-17s, MiG-21Ms, MiG-21Bis, MiG-23BNs & MiG-27Ms that were earmarked for OP Safed Sagar? And why were such aircraft then committed into battle for strike missions, knowing fully well that this was suicidal? The then CAS of the IAF, ACM A Y Tipnis, must be held accountable for displaying criminal negligence.
Several other questions remain unanswered till this day. For instance:
1) Despite the IA’s ground formations throughout northern J & K reporting highly increased sortie generation by the Pakistan Army’s SA.330 & Mi-17 helicopters all the way to Turtuk since April 1999, why did the IAF not launch MiG-25R recce sorties in April & May that year to find out what was going on, especially at the PA’s major logistics base at Oltinthang?
2) Why did the IAF fail to deploy an airspace surveillance radar north of the Zoji La Pass at this time?
3) The IAF had already procured second-hand Searcher Mk.1 MALE-UAVs from Singapore back in 1996. Why were such UAVs not pressed into service for airborne recce?
4) What was the reason given by the IAF’s then CAS, ACM A Y Tipnis, for his reticence to employ offensive airpower without political authorisation when he knew very well that such airpower was reqd for usage well within India-controlled airspace & not anywhere along the LoC?
5) Why did the IAF insist on maintaining its own fleet of SA.315B lama/Cheetah light observation/search-n-rescue helicopters when the IA’s Army Aviation Corps (AAC) was perfectly capable of doing such jobs? Shouldn’t the IAF have long ago (after 1986) transferred such helicopters to the IA’s AAC & in their place procured armed Mi-17s capable of undertaking combat search-n-rescue (CSAR) operations? Is it not a matter of shame for the IAF that even on the morning of February 27, 2019 the IAF could not launch a single CSAR sorties for safely recovering Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman from within hostile territory? Is that why Abhinandan wasn’t carrying any personal locator beacon?
6) All of the above only go on to prove the intellectual bankruptsy of the contents of the KARGIL Review Committee’s report, while the contents of the Lt Gen A R K Reddy Committee’s report (he was then the Chief of Staff of the IA’s HQ Northern Command) on the lessons learnt from OP VIJAY remain confidential till this day, and no one knows if a similar committee had been constituted by the IAF’s HQ Western Command to learn lessons from OP SAFED SAGAR.
MORAL of the Story: If mistakes continue to be brushed under the carpet & are glossed over for the sake of false glory & mutual back-patting, then such mistakes will continue to be repeated, but next time with far greater negative repercussions.
Bipin Rawat everytime after Modi delivers his pronouncements
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