IAF is a professional air force, but sadly they are not led professionally. The top brass have been seriously involved in a way to fill their own pockets, and there is no bigger example than ACM Tyagi and NAK Browne
Su-30 MKI was there during their time as leaders, how exactly did they take care of the nations premier aircraft?
How about ACM Rahas contribution? NAK Browne and Raha did contribute to commenting counter to the efforts of MoD. They were trying to push for Rafale and thus making it difficult for MoD to negotiate price or terms.
The spare management during their time had issues and all they did was point hands at Russia that Russian planes are not good etc, Where ever Su-30 is used, it is feared and there are no spares issues. In fact India is the biggest user of Su-30 MKI and its surprising that the IAF chiefs never thought to give importance to handling spares and spare management? Just to give a point, IAF requires roughly Rs 3450 crore worth of spares for its Su-30 MKI fleet and IAF just provides for Rs 50 crore for spares that shows that the top brass of IAF has no clue of what actually is happening. And they dont have a vision what to do or how to marshall resources, they are more eager to just read aircraft brochures and then tell HAL to incorporate all those. I might suggest to sack the entire top brass and to promote the lower officers at least they would not be so involved in corruption.
We are one of the air force where even Mirage 2000 was grounded. It is wonderful for the French fanboys to comment the bad availability rate of Su-30 MKI which as we see is due to bad spare management, but when the Mirage 2000 is grounded, they start pointing fingers at IAF. hahaha hilarious
Earlier Su-30 MK was twin seat plane which was what IAF wanted, and IAF then tested these planes and suggested the avionics and improvements they wanted and this India specific plane is Su-30 MKI. Remember one thing here, the French did not help, we paid for the avionics. IF the French had refused, there were others of course. For example we use LITENING pods, we are are not ordering French pods, are we?
The big difference between Rafale and Su-30 MKI is the area of operations, France is a small country so Rafale does make the right cut with its range. Where as Russia is a big country and after the dissolution of USSR, it had had defence cuts, and also its Short range frontline planes were the first casualties like the MiG-21 etc, with the range of Su-27/30 a squadron of these can easily cover area of 3-4 squadrons for CAPs and thus smaller nos of planes can handle the job of 4-5 squadrons. Also since these are more advanced with longer range radar, better armed a squadron of Su-30 can easily handle the work load of 5 squadrons of MiG-21 in terms of range, and weapons,
IAF is using Su-30 MKI twice the recommended flight hours and this matter was pointed by CAG also,
India operated CATOBAR with INS Vikrant and so is very much experienced in CATOBAR operations. Those 40 Sukhois were replaced free and yes SU 30mk were converted by HAL & DRDO with help from Israel and France to a beast SU 30MKIs but Rafales were no match to it and it still is no match in certain areas like the combat range and weapons load it carries (now don't Rafale can carry 9.5 tons as then it won't have as much combat range and if you add drop tanks which Sukhoi doesn't need to carry the weapons load is reduced to below sukhoi levels). T-90s are better than what are neighbors can field and for better tank we have ARJUN now which are a beast. For Kilo submarines these are the same which sunk US nuclear Submarine in a naval exercise. Check for how much IAF is flogging Sukhois IAF is flying them twice the recommended hours per year and in most extreme conditions. The supply is also related to orders being placed on time and in advance which IAF wasn't doing it is matter of warehousing and not supply...........
