Question spareparts for MiG mishaps

In fact, the MiG (especially the MiG-21 series) has been the backbone of the Indian Air Force combat capability for a number of decades. We manufactured most of them in the country. But for economic and other reasons, not all the spares were manufactured in the country. The collapse of the Soviet Union put enormous pressure on supply of spares, even where they were of requisite quality.

The difficulties were known even publicly, and every effort was made to overcome the problem. This is exactly why the ten-year ‘‘Self Reliance Initiative’’ announced by the DRDO in 1995 to alter the indigenous component from the prevailing 30 percent to 70 percent by 2005 was sought.

Little is known about the fate of that initiative after seven years. At the same time, low defence spending since the mid-1980s (with value of the Rupee in relation to US Dollar dropped by over 70 percent), especially the extremely low investments in modernisation, led to serious shortfalls in modernisation plans of the air force.

The LCA, which was estimated to replace the MiG-21 (which we stopped manufacturing in 1987) starting in late 1980s, is still years away. A major shortfall in force level loomed large through the 1990s. Because the basic design of the MiG-21 is robust and capable of full operational use well beyond the original design life, Russians, after thorough inspections, extended the life of these aircraft.

But every single component in a combat aircraft (and there are thousands of them, ranging from special rubber seals to high-technology systems) also has a design life; but its availability is dependent on the manufacturing line being open. This in the post-Soviet era became a major question mark itself.

Not every component and spare part was manufactured in today’s Russia. With the extensive socio-economic crises of the disintegrated Soviet Union, every East European country and former Soviet states was seriously affected. The centralised system of weapons production also disintegrated; and for years even post-Soviet Moscow was not entirely clear where specific components used to be manufactured or who the sub-contractors were!

Shortage of spares inevitably leads to using available items even by removing them from other aircraft. But this is subjected to thorough inspection and tests.

Since a significant safety factor is built into the defined design life, this normally does not lead to breakdown unless the process is extensive and prolonged. IAF naturally seeks the highest quality control.

We tend to sometimes forget the number of times IAF had to be ordered on the highest alert during the 1990s because of external threats. And finally a war had to be actually fought in 1999, flowed by the prolonged high-alert deployment last year where the IAF would have had to go into a possible war with virtually no further warning period.

Except under ideal conditions, decision makers would be forced to choose between immediate combat readiness and the health of every nut and bolt in a complex system like a combat aircraft. IAF naturally seeks both. But the situation itself has been stacked against the service, now to such an extent that the fighter gap which was looming large because in the early 1990s (and closed by life-extension of MiG-21 fleet) is no longer avoidable since procurement decisions are badly stalled leading to the unique situation where as much as 12-20 percent of the IAF’s budgeted modernisation funds had to be surrendered for the past two years.