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Political hurdles may delay AJT acquisition

Josy Joseph in New Delhi

With politicking taking over the fate of the much-awaited Advanced Jet Trainers for the Indian Air Force, its immediate purchase looks uncertain once again.

The latest hurdle, propped up during a meeting of Parliament's Standing Committee on Defence on Wednesday, could force the government to start afresh the process for buying the much-wanted jets for training IAF pilots.

The lack of AJTs, proposals for which have been pending for the last 14 years, is one of the most important issues sighted by experts for the staggeringly large number of accidents involving IAF fighters.

According to sources, MPs, most of them belonging to the Opposition parties, accused the government of giving in to British Aerospace, and almost accepting its offer of selling its Hawk jets at the rate of Rs 600 million per fighter.

Suresh Kalmadi of the Congress raised the issue during the meeting, and demanded that a fresh global tender be called for the AJT purchase. He said the defence ministry was proceeding with the same tender which was sought several years back when there were very few players in the field.

The ministry had apparently received tenders only from two companies: British Aerospace and French Alpha Jet. The latter had stopped production of AJTs a few years back, and so has been ruled out, leaving British Aerospace which manufactures the Hawk jets.

The MPs pointed out that the Hawk jets, presently in service with the Royal Air Force of Britain, have shown metal fatigue and other problems. They also claimed that the Hawk technology is almost three decades old. The price quoted by Hawk, at about Rs 600 million, is double the market price, the MPs claimed.

The MPs pointed out that there are other AJTs such as Aeamacchi MB 339 FD, YAK 130, MIG-AT etc which are available at half the price and with much modern technology.

Defence Secretary T R Prasad assured the members that the IAF will make a presentation to the Standing Committee on the AJT issue, but that did not seem to have satisfied the MPs. The MPs accused the defence ministry of bypassing the Standing Committee, and demanded that the committee be kept informed of the huge contract.

Defence ministry officials refused to comment on the MPs' demand.

However, there is a common refrain in the corridors of the defence ministry that the much-awaited purchase of AJT would again be delayed with objections from the MPs.

AJT is one of the oldest proposals of the Indian defence establishment, which has a direct impact on the training of fighter pilots. In the last 10 years, the accident rates have shot up, and today young pilots, just out of the Air Force Academy, are flying the MiG-21s and other fighters without any training on an advanced trainer. Their last training is on a Kiran plane, an outdated and obsolete trainer.

The IAF has lost over 20 fighters in the last one year, most of them being MIG-21s flown by young flying officers just out of the Air Force Academy.

The IAF admits that it has one of the highest accident rates in the world and that most of the ill-fated pilots -- it has lost over 85 pilots in last decade -- were young officers just of the academy. "Major reasons could be lack of Advance Jet Trainers, and some technical troubles, especially with the MiG-21s," a senior IAF officer said.

According to available information, in the last eight years the IAF has lost over 190 aircraft, a majority of them being MiG-21 variants. Sources point out that the upgradation of IAF's MiG-21 fleet -- of the 32 MiG squadrons, 16 are MiG-21 variants -- has not yet borne any fruit. IAF and Russian authorities had tied up for a major technical upgradation of MIG-21s, but to date only two fighters have been upgraded.

In a statement made in March this year, Defence Minister George Fernandes said of the 37 Indian Air Force plane crashes since January 1997, 15 were due to technical problems while 12 were caused by human error. In three cases, both the factors had spelled doom. Two of these accidents involving Kiran had occurred during training. But in nine cases it was pure human error on the part of the pilot concerned that had caused the accident.

IAF sources admitted that the high rate of human error cannot be ignored. But the absence of AJTs seems to be playing a major role in this. Senior IAF sources said it is necessary to train the pilots on an AJT so that the human error factor can be brought down.

The last independent audit of IAF's flight safety was done in 1997, by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. It had examined the nature of 187 accidents and 2,729 other incidents involving IAF aircraft between April 1991 and March 1997.

It had pointed out that though the "overall accidents per 10,000 flying hours have registered a decline over the period 1991-97, the accident rate of fighter stream, particularly MiG-21 variants, continue to be high". The IAF lost 147 aircraft and 63 pilots during 1991-97.

The IAF has been trying to acquire AJTs, but various factors including bureaucratic delays have put the crucial project in the cold storage for over a decade now.

Last year, the Standing Committee had pointed out the immediate need for an AJT while pulling up the government for delaying the purchase.

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