MiGnificent flying machines

Obviously, the machines served the force well. And, finally, the IAF decided that the machines have served enough. So two weeks ahead of the May 1 phase-out deadline, the IAF agreed to 8216;declassify8217; some of its mysteries. It was the privilege of two Express journalists to be the first inside the IAF8217;s MiG-25 Foxbat spyplane unit.

After a revelatory three-hour tour of the base, the MiG-25 turns out nothing like what the drawing-room legends have thrown it up to be.

It is a great deal more.

The traditional secrecy lingers, but there is no longer any doubt. Ask anyone, including the intensely passionate base commander Air Commodore Shankar Mani, about whether the Foxbats were hurriedly purchased in 1981 to spy on Pakistan and China, and he will tell you: 8220;They were bought for strategic reconnaissance. That should answer your question.8221;

Unlike the fierce Cold War arms race, the Foxbat represented a typically radical swerve away from the way the world was moving in the 1960s and 70s.

A big mammoth of an aircraft, powered by huge twin engines, flying three times the speed of sound and over three times higher than the maximum altitude allowed to civil airliners, the MiG-25 was the perfect monster the Indian government 8212; and especially then Air Chief Idris Latif 8212; needed to gun up IAF8217;s virtually non-existent reconnaissance capability in the late 1970s to spy on Pakistan and China.

Latif, now leading a retired life in Hyderabad, pulled out his old albums three days ago to reminisce. Over the phone, he said, 8220;I am saddened that our Foxbats will soon be gone, but they served an intensely useful purpose. When I was the IAF chief, I was shocked and delighted to learn that the Soviets were actually offering MiG-25 Foxbats to us in 1980. I phoned up Mrs Indira Gandhi and she told me to go ahead and make a decision. She was a brilliant leader to work with. The Foxbat was the best in the world and it was made available to us.8221;

A month before he retired, Latif took a Foxbat up 90,000 feet to say farewell to his force.

The other incident widely speculated upon was how in 1987, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi shot down a suggestion from the Air chief that the Foxbats be used to spy on Pakistani armoured movements. It was a particularly hostile time in the Western sector.

The incumbent chief at the time, Dennis La Fontaine, now living a less hectic life at his farmhouse in Brahmanapally village in Andhra Pradesh, told The Sunday Express: 8220;Those were issues of national security. If you believe that strategic reconnaissance is a bad thing, then understand that military intelligence gathering, by its very nature, is illegal. These are understood around the world. Why pick up these issues long past?8221;

La Fontaine was about to undertake a flight in a Foxbat when he was Central Air Commander, but by the time he arrived at the base, he received orders appointing him Western Air Commander, and so a dream remained unfulfilled.

An enigma shrouds the Foxbat. Entirely unarmed 8212; the IAF chose the reconnaissance variant, not the interceptor 8212; and with no modern countermeasures against surface-launched missiles, the Foxbat8217;s only defence lies in its speed and cruising altitude.

At Mach 3, it leaves even the best guided missiles far behind in a chase, and at 90,000 feet, it is comfortably beyond actionable ground radar beams. Put together, the MiG-25 is simply invisible to the enemy.

In 1997, an IAF Foxbat famously darted into Pakistani airspace and its sonic boom alerted ground radars into action. But zooming back towards the Indian border, the Foxbat was just a blur to Pakistani air defence missiles and F-16s scrambling up from Sargodha.

Interestingly, the initial lifespan of the MiG-25s was to be just 14 years and the planes would have been gone by 1995. The year saw them put to amazing use darting up to the stratosphere to get crystal-clear photographs of the solar eclipse, the sun8217;s rays untouched and unscattered by interfering atmospheric molecules.

One of the two pilots who flew that mission is also the seniormost and most experienced Foxbat pilot still in service, Air Vice Marshal Sumit Mukerji, assistant chief at Air Headquarters.

8220;It was an experiment that worked. Not only did we film the diamond ring of the eclipse, but also the starburst, when the sun8217;s light filtered through the crevasses and mountains on the moon. It was an amazing image. And from that height and speed, we were able to film the eclipse for a minute and 57 seconds, impossible from the ground,8221; he said.

In 1995, a life extension programme pushed the MiG-25s for another ten years. In 2001, another programme propelled the jets until 2005. The final extension was made last year. Finally, the IAF decided the machines wouldn8217;t be pushed any more.

Predictably, it is now exorbitantly expensive and time-consuming to maintain the Foxbats. With the Russians no longer supplying spares and claiming to have done away with all blueprints, any more reverse engineering by the technicians at the Bareilly airbase is plainly uneconomical.

Wing Commander Jayapal Patil, the technical officer who currently keeps the jets in ship-shape on their final run, said, 8220;These aircraft have flown for 25 years at high speeds, so there is a level of aerodynamic strain. After the first life extension, we inspected and strengthened the jet8217;s mounting points, and changes made to the landing gear. But the aircraft are now at their end.8221;

Base commander Shankar Mani is more forthright: 8220;Now, if there8217;s a problem, we have to struggle to even find a fuel leak because it is such an enormous and complex machine. The Russians don8217;t help us with spares or blueprints. On the flipside, we8217;ve gained precious expertise maintaining the Foxbats entirely ourselves.8221;

The apparent romance of flying spying missions in such brutally powerful aircraft is severely eroded by the reality of multiple dangers pilots are always just inches away from and the indispensable discomforts of flying in extreme conditions.

First, of course, there8217;s the fear. Knowing that you8217;re sitting on 20 tons of jet fuel and moving at screaming velocities can get unnerving.

Secondly, you8217;re in a decidedly uncomfortable skin-tight suit to stop your blood from boiling over and rupturing your skin.

Thirdly, you8217;re always faced with the prospect of a 60,000 foot free fall if you ever have to eject from that altitude before your parachute opens. It has never happened, so nobody knows if a pilot will survive such a long drop through far below freezing temperatures.

But Wing Commander Alok Chauhan, one of the two pilots who took a Foxbat into the skies exclusively for this newspaper8217;s cameras, sums it up like only a Foxbat pilot can: 8220;When you8217;re up that high, and you can see the earth8217;s curvature and the blue band of the atmosphere, there8217;s a serene sense of detachment, a feeling of physical separation that is hard to match and difficult to describe.8221;

Spiritual, maybe.

Sworn to secrecy

8226; In mission room, only three men pilot, tech officer and mission commander go over the spying mission; information reaches nobody else

8226; Mission commander briefs pilot on flight path, altitude, other parameters, technical officer makes assessment of mission demands on jet

8226; New celluloid wheels loaded, technical inspection done

8226; Pilot takes off, flight-path fed into mission computer. Just nothing on paper

8226; Four cameras operated either manually by pilot or pre-programmed to start taking snaps at designated altitude, time from take-off

8226; After mission, pilot debriefed for any event unrecorded by cameras, observation or hostile 8220;incident8221;

8226; Films transported to main processing lab

8226; Photos cropped, enhanced, enlarged according to requirement, dispatched to operations room for inspection by mission commander

8226; Intelligence either archived or communicated through secure channels on a need basis up the chain of command; information digitalised if need be

8226; All archives classified, categorised and securely stowed away

8212; ENS

Inside a 30-tonner, at Mach 3 and ABOVE 70,000 feet8230;

8226; At 3.2 Mach, MiG-258217;s the fastest aircraft in service, quicker than a missile

8226; It8217;s a gas guzzler: twin Tumansky turbofans burn 23,000 litres in a single long mission

8226; Serial production began in 1969 but West had its first look at a MiG-25 when Lt Viktor Belenko of the Soviet Union defected on Sept 6, 1976, landing his aircraft at Hakodate in Japan

8226; Built mainly out of nickel-steel, plus titanium in heat-critical areas. Weighs nearly 30 tonnes

8226; Beyond 70,000 ft, pilots use same skintight inners, helmets as Russian cosmonauts

8226; Russians pushed a Foxbat to 123,000 ft, IAF sticks to a 90,000 ft ceiling

8226; Entered Indian service in 1981 with the No.102 Trisonics in Bareilly

8226; IAF had 8 single-seat Mig-25R for high-speed reconnaissance, and 2 twin-seat MiG-25U for conversion training

8226; Can map one lakh sq-km in four-five sorties

8226; Without leaving Bareilly airspace, a Foxbat can eyeball Delhi with its 1200 mm cameras. So if it8217;s flying over Punjab or Kashmir, can check on Pak

8226; Outlived competitor SR-71 Blackbird of the USAF

8226; MiG-25s were also used by Algeria, Bulgaria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya and Syria. But not many remain in service

8216;The MiG-25s are still in perfect working condition8217;

8226; The field of vision from the MiG-25 is 1,100-km and its clarity of perspective remain unsurpassed. These planes have served their utility. We are moving to a higher network-centric warfare capability.
8212; Air Commodore Shankar Mani, Base Commander, AFS Bareilly

8226; The MiG-25s are still in perfect condition. Even at the time of phase out, all systems are working fine. We even made structural changes to the undercarriage all by ourselves.
8212; Wing Commander Jayapal Patil, Rapiers Sqn Technical Officer

8216;Most in IAF have not even seen this base or the MiG-258217;

8226; Most in the IAF have not even seen this base or the aircraft. Frankly, we can push our Foxbats for another 2-3 years, but after three life extensions, it8217;s prudent to retire them now.8212;
Wing Commander Alok Chauhan, Rapiers Sqn MiG-25 pilot

8226; After 25 years, letting go of the Foxbat is sentimental. It has done what it was inducted to do. My job is to wind up the squadron and raise a new MiG-21 unit.
8212; Wing Commander Manish Khanna, Commanding Officer, Rapiers Sqn