Advanced jet trainers to be inducted during current Plan

Advanced Jet Trainers will be inducted into the Indian Air Force during the Ninth Defence Plan period, official sources said on Monday.

The Ninth Defence Plan, like the civilian plan, will cover the period 1997 to 2002.

The government is understood to have held discussions with one of the shortlisted vendors -- British Aerospace -- for its Hawk AJT. Discussions with the second shortlisted vendor -- Dassault Aviation of France -- for its Alpha AJT have been held in abeyance.

While details of the discussions with British Aerospace are not known, it is authoritatively learnt that the government has decided to indigenously manufacture the AJTs from the raw material stage itself.

This decision is understood to have been taken based on technical evaluation of the proposals and discussions with the vendors. Commercial negotiations are understood to have already begun to finalise the programme.

The government has already approved acquisition of AJTs to meet the training requirements of the IAF's fighter pilots. The proposal for acquisition of AJTs was mooted in 1984.

The government has once again been pulled up for the delay in acquiring the AJTs by Parliament's standing committee on defence.

In its latest report, the committee has said it is ''certainly not happy'' to observe that even after an inordinate delay of more than 12 years, the government has not been able to select AJTs for the IAF.

The committee has also said that apart from a loss of a large number of costly fighter planes, the nation has also lost some of its best pilots.

''Though the government is making efforts in this direction, in no way has the uncertainty enveloping the acquisition of AJTs diminished over the years and the AJT remains a distant dream, compromising the safety of the nation's fighter pilots and aircraft.''

The committee also expressed concern over the fact that there has been no significant progress in the negotiations which have been going on for several years and recommended that the government should take steps for induction of the AJT urgently within a fixed time-frame, taking into consideration all the available options.

The IAF shortlisted the British Hawk and the Franco-German Alpha jet for training pilots to fly frontline warplanes and curb the rate of accidents. Subsequently, the still-under-development Russian AJT MiG-AT also joined the race as it was said to have many special features.

The La Fontaine committee, which investigated the causes of accidents in the IAF and analysed more than 200 mishaps of different categories, had recommended AJTs for Stage III training which is the most advanced training for fighter pilots to fly top-of-the-line war planes.

According to defence experts, the MiG-AT once ready would be a generation ahead of the Hawk and Alpha jets as both the British and French aircraft were developed about 25 years ago.

The MiG-AT is understood to have a reprogrammable cockpit which can train pilots to fly war planes such as the MiG-29, the Sukhoi-30, the Mirage-2000, the Eurofighter and the US F-15, F-16 and F-18. However, the MiG-AT is not ready as yet.

Defence sources indicated that if an outright purchase was made the AJT deal could be in the region of Rs 200 billion or so as the IAF wanted three squadrons -- 66 aircraft -- AJTs. It has scaled down its requirements from the initial 98 aircraft.

However, till such time as the AJT enters service, the government has acquired additional MiG-21 trainers to augment the existing resources as well as to cater for dedicated training requirements.