Indian Military Aircraft Mishaps and Crashes.

Please report all Indian Military Aviation Mishaps here.

@PARIKRAMA @anant_s @Levina @Hellfire @Ankit Kumar 001 @Gessler @Skull and Bones

 

RIP, condolences to the friends and family of the personnel affected.

 

Well, first of all RIP to the personnel killed in the crash.

As of asking DM MP to resign...I'm not really sure. He's not single-handedly capable of changing the structure, equipment, and procurement of the defense forces. Procurement of new platforms to replace the old ones depends
on various sectors of governance including the Finance ministry, and the services themselves.

Do the defense procurement procedures require an overhaul? Yes, definitely. Are the public servants and the top brass of IAF doing a good job of procurement? Nope.

But it cannot be forgotten that MP is a lot better than any other DM in recent times (AK Antony, George Fernandes etc.) - he's not perfect, but if you want him gone, might as well suggest who's fit enough to take his place? Who do you think will do a better job? If you remove something, you need to have some thing that can effectively replace it - otherwise you're left with a vacuum, and a vacuum sucks in all kinds of trash.

Changing the DM every now and then will have seriously detrimental effects on procurement.

 

I'm not privy to any defense ministry policies that you don't know about...but the only thing I can say with certainty is that it's not as easy as it sounds.

I'm yet to get a clear picture of just how transparent the flow of money is to the DM - we read the figures of X amount left unspent only after the FY has passed. Plus, it is my belief that amount/credit is tagged for a certain procurement contract that is believed to be close to finalization (i.e. if we want to sign this deal, we better have X amount ready to transfer), and we can't spend a slice of the amount earmarked for one procurement to fund the purchase of something else simultaneously. Sometimes, the deal does not happen within that FY (for whatever reason including the papers being held up on the DAC table, the CCS table, or some problem from the vendor), and the amount earmarked for it is declared as 'unspent' at the end-of-FY report. Can these problems be rectified through smart spending policies? I think so - but I'm not an economics expert and I've no clue how easy or difficult it is to put it into practice.

Here's something I'm not sure of myself - what happens to this unspent amount at the end of FY? I believe it is routed back into the economy, and forms part of the next budget, where it can be reassigned to any other sector (roads, railways, electricity, education, whatever) as required. I'm not sure if it is sent back into the defense expenditure. For example, consider if I gave you 45 last FY and 5 remained unspent and you gave it back to me. This FY, my budget improved and I can now give you 50 on paper - does this mean I'm actually giving you only 45 again and the +5 is made up of what you gave back last time? It's possible, but it's more complex than it looks.

Bottom line is - while it's true that large amounts of money remains unspent at the end of FY, we have to understand that this doesn't necessarily mean the DM doesn't know how or what to spend on, or that money is being wasted (not used) - what you didn't use this year (due to any number of reasons as I've mentioned above), you WILL use next year.

As I said, it's not as simple as as it sounds....and neither you nor me are qualified enough to seal this matter and name a culprit, without being wrong in more ways than one.

Depends on what exactly caused the problem. "Mechanical failure" is too vague a term. What brought it on? Surely it can't be a design fault - Cheetahs have been in use for decades in dozens of countries and if there was a design fault it would have been rectified long ago. Was it a problem in the way HAL built this particular machine? (In which case the mistake can occur in any machine - new or old) Was it because of weather conditions? Was it because the ground crew that's supposed to do maintenance on the chopper made a mistake which led to components failing in flight? (As per me, this is likely to be the most probable reason).

Exact reason will be known only after detailed investigation.

Either way - while it's clear that this is an aged platform, there's no such thing as Cheetahs falling out of the sky due to old age. This is not a biological organism. Mechanical failure in this case occurs if a component is damaged/deteriorated, what's the solution? Maintenance, repair and/or replacement of the component. HAL already has a local production line and supply of spares for this model is almost 100% localized (not like MiG-21s where not having access to spares caused a majority of the crashes) - from a Defense Ministry perspective, there's not much else you can do.

And let me emphasize...there's no such thing as planes dying due to old age. Wear & tear occurs on the individual components, but the airframe itself has a much longer life. In fact, even most of the MiG-21FLs and MiG-23s that IAF has retired still have enough airframe life left in them to serve comfortably for another 15 years or more - PROVIDED the individual items (rotaries, consumables, engine components, and other Line-Replaceable Units (LRUs) are properly made, maintained and repaired.

WWI aircraft can still fly without a hitch if you make sure any deterioration in the components is taken care of.

So why are old aircraft retired at all? One reason is that the TACTICAL REQUIREMENTS have changed considerably and can no longer be fulfilled by the old design...or because maintenance of the old aircraft has become a problem owing to either unavailability of proper spares from certified suppliers (part of the reason why MiG-21 suffered so badly) or because maintenance itself has become economically non-viable.

The MoD has done nearly everything in it's power to make sure HAL/services have everything they need to operate the Cheetah without any problem. But please do understand that MoD's procurement process is NOT the only thing governing flight safety - there are an infinite number of variables involved and as I said, it's over the top to ask DM to resign for this crash. If he personally THINKS he's responsible, he can resign all he wants - but he doesn't NEED to.

Well-proven platforms that are nowhere as old as our Cheetahs crash all over the world. The US Marine Corps Harrier AV-8A had a near 50% crash rate across the fleet even when it was relatively new. How many Secretaries of Defense resigned over it?

Again, it might be easy to call him responsible - but actually going into the exact reasons for a crash might reveal something different.

Well, the Rafale deal has been finalized (something that was on the table for 2 DMs before him) with India-specific modifications. Procurement of a next-generation BVRAAM has been finalized...and ofcourse, the first real artillery procurement for the IA in decades is happening now...the first steps (confirmed orders) for new infantry equipment like vests, helmets etc. have been cleared by him...and I just pulled all these from the back of my mind. If we go into details, there's a lot more happening behind the scenes.

Compare this with Antony's tenure (or with Fernandes's) and tell me MP isn't better.

You KNOW that's not true.

 

It's unfortunate but return of Capex happens.

It has less to do with the intent of the armed forces or the bureaucracy but the inherent nature of Ministry of defense.
will crosspost
http://indiandefence.com/threads/ma...international-border.56796/page-9#post-503802