MiG crashes revive safety issue

By C.V. Gopalakrishnan

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, MAY 7. The death of the Flying Officer, Ajay Sharma, in the crash of a MiG-21 aircraft during the military exercise, Poorna Vijay, in a forest in Bikaner district in Rajasthan is expected to revive the concern over the safety of flying the plane. This is the second MiG 21 crash in less than a year, with the last one resulting in the death of Flt. Lt. S. Shukla when his aircraft crashed immediately after take-off at the Palam air base in August 2000. The latest crash would raise the number of MiG aircraft lost by the IAF to over 55. The Palam crash was attributed to ``engine related problems''.

``Common Cause'', a non-Governmental organisation, in a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Delhi High Court, said that the MiG 21s of the IAF, had become vintage aircraft as their technology dated back to the 1950s. The Government had not carried out modernisation of the old aircraft and the Common Cause said in its PIL that this had resulted in a high rate of technical failure and crashes.

The availability of the spares and other replacements badly needed for the MiG 21s has also suffered, particularly after the break-up of the former Soviet Union. The lack of capabilities in India's state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., in spite of its two divisions at Sonabeda and Nasik which had been producing the MiGs for modifying or upgrading the MiG 21s, has led to the high rate of technical failure, resulting in a high percentage of crashes. The Delhi court had said that the Government should look into the points raised in the PIL which has sought directions to restrain authorities from using the MiG 21s in its present form.

Need for advanced aircraft

During 1999 and 2000, the IAF had lost around 20 ageing MiG aircraft. Among the reasons given for the crashes, it has no advanced jet trainer as in the case of the other combat fighter aircraft. It was time to switch over to more advanced aircraft. A Rs. 12 billion Indo-Russian programme for upgrading 125 MiG 21s with improved avionics and weapons systems was signed recently by New Delhi and Moscow. The programme has been delayed because of problems faced by Russian technicians in integrating Western and Israel avionics systems with the basic MiG airframe. Two prototypes had been undergoing flight tests in Russia and should have been brought to India for further tests. The MiG 21 was seen even by Air Chief Marshal A.Y.Tipnis as a highly ``demanding aircraft''. In spite of this, young pilots graduating from the training academy of the IAF immediately after the completion of their basic training on slow flying aircraft, such as the HPT-32 and Kiran, had to go through a quantum jump when they were inducted into the MiG Operational Flying Training Unit without an intermediate phase on slower jets. The MiG 21 was seen as the ``most feared aircraft'' by the countries which had acquired them.

With the MiG 21 tumbling down in the ``ladder of aerial superiority'', after having been through four generations of redesigning, even the East European countries, which had been in the Soviet block, have been looking for other fighter aircraft. They had already incurred a huge expenditure for the upgradation of the MiG 21s. India had also awarded a contract to Mikoyan of Russia for the upgradation of 26 MiG Bis jets. Mikoyan integrated the U.S., British and Israeli systems which were specified by the IAF as being superior to U.S. systems.

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