MONITORING DESK: Indian Air Force (IAF) is earning bad name for Russian Military Aviation Industry after IAF lost two Mig21s and one Sukhoi Su-30 within a period of three months, reports Eurasian News.
Indian Air Force lost one Mig21 in an action during a dogfight with its arch rival—Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and also lost one Sukhoi Su-30 to PAF but Indian Air Force is not ready to accept that it lost Sukhoi Su-30 during dogfights. Indian military circles claim that Sukhoi Su-30 was shot down by Pakistani drone in Indian airspace. Amazingly, IAF officially does not accept that it lost Su-30 while its inventory confirmed it lost at least one Su-30 in March 2019.
Report maintained that the Indian media instead of questioning performance and professional skills of IAF pilots is blaming Russian Aviation Industry for losing two Mig21s and one Sukhoi Su-30 for malfunctioning while the reality is that Mig21 is not as bad as being portrayed by Indian media while Sukhoi Su-30 is still a top choice of Russia and China for their Air Defence (AD) and for attack purposes.
Experts in Russian Military Aviation believe that losing two Mig21s within a short time span of three months is due to incompetency of Indian pilots not due to any faulty operation in Mig21. So much so IAF lost one Su-30 which is one of the best available fighter jets on earth.
“Russian Military Hardware is far ahead of others but it needs decent pilots to fly it and drunken pilots or physically impaired pilots are not allowed to reach its cockpits,” added report.
Report said that Russian Aviation leaders must be in contact with IAF to explain what IAF did with Su-30 and brought bad name for this state of the art super fighter jet?
The Сухой Су-30 (Sukhoi Su-30) is a twin-engine, two-seat supermaneuverable fighter aircraft. It is a multirole fighter for all-weather, air-to-air and air-to-surface deep interdiction missions.
The Su-30 has two distinct version branches, manufactured by competing organisations: KnAAPO and the Irkut Corporation, both of which come under the Sukhoi group’s umbrella.
KnAAPO manufactures the Su-30MKK and the Su-30MK2 and were designed for China, and later for Indonesia, Uganda, Venezuela, and Vietnam.
When India showed interests in the Su-30, Irkut offered the multirole Su-30MKI, which originated as the Su-27UB modified with avionics appropriate for fighters. Along with its ground-attack capabilities, the series adds features for the air-superiority role, such as canards, thrust-vectoring, and a long-range phased-array radar.
It may be remembered that Russian Air Force operates several Su-30s and has zero accident record.
Su-30 has maximum speed of 2,120 km/h; 1,320 mph) at altitude with 3,000 km range at altitude with excellent climbing rate of 45,275 feet within first minute.
It carries 1 × 30 mm Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-30-1 autocannon with 150 rounds, 12 hard-points with a capacity of up to 8,000 kg and provisions to carry combinations of several kinds of rockets including S-8KOM/BM/OM, S-13T/OF, S-25OFM-PU. It is powered by several missiles including Air-to-Air missiles of R-27R/ER/T/ET/P, R-73E, RVV-AE and several Air-to-surface missiles including Kh-29T/L, Kh-59M/ME.
Russian Aviation circles believe that IAF must work on better training of its pilots, technically sound maintenance of machines and must work to build confidence among its pilots instead of blaming perfect and state of the art hardware bought from Russia.
