AJT takes wing

Most of this fleet is scheduled to go out of service during the coming year or so and we will be faced with a major gap in our operational and training capabilities. It is also tragic that in spite of widespread consensus on the AJT, including the conclusions of parliamentary committees on defence, some factor or the other has caused the proverbial slip between the cup and the lip. It must be ensured that the process to meet a critical need is not sabotaged again.

Having said that we must also remember that the AJT cannot be a magic solution to reduce accidents as popular wisdom would have us believe.

Sound training is a vital foundation for good flying and high quality combat capabilities and this intrinsically implies lesser accidents. Appropriate and good equipment is but one of the many essentials of that good training, which also include aspects like the quantum of training and the content and quality of that training, especially of fighter pilots. This was the reason Winston Churchill immortalised the role of fighter pilots by the now famous tribute of so many owing so much to so few.

It would appear from the information in the public domain that we might be making some sort of a compromise in acquiring only 66 aircraft against the original requirement which was around 160 machines. Cost escalation, especially the increasingly unfavourable currency exchange ratio, which has changed the unit cost of the aircraft from around Rs 21-odd crore to over Rs 98 crore, may have been a major factor for this. But this should also be seen in terms of building self-reliance in economic as well as defence terms.

We should not repeat the Jaguar aircraft acquisition experience where, unlike the MiGs, piecemeal procurement did not provide adequate economies of scale at any one time with the progressive manufacture under licence. One of the major reasons why the collapse of the Soviet Union had a less negative impact on our defence preparedness was the extensive manufacture in India of weapons and equipment under licence. Although our balance of payment and foreign exchange reserves position is comfortable now, we should reduce the outflow of capital by evolving a long-term perspective of our needs.