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  • thobbes

Has the Indian Air Force reversed it's decline

Over the last couple of decades, there has been concern in Indian circles about the shrinking of their air force’s combat capability well below 39.5 authorised fighter squadrons.

The reasons for this decline have not been budget cutbacks ala Europe but rather delays in MRCA and LCA as well as relatively high attrition rates especially for MiG-21 and MiG-27 (but then even Mirage fleet has struggled to maintained sufficient numbers for 3 squadrons).

From memory Indian squadrons are approximately 16-20 a/c strong though ones like Mirage 2000 squadrons have far fewer a/c (49 airframes split across 3 squadrons)

Has the Indian AF managed to reverse this decline with ordering of additional Su-30MKI?

As you can see from Orbat below, Indian AF still have issue of numerous squadrons equipped with obsolete MiG-21 including 5 with MiG-21M – in fact a third of the fleet is made up of MiG-21s.

Current squadrons (I think some are OCUs):

Su-30MKI – 272 aircraft on order, 13-14 Sqns planned, currently 8 squadrons
2 Sqn
8 Sqn
20 Sqn
24 Sqn
30 Sqn
31 Sqn
102 Sqn (recce)
220 Sqn

Mirage 2000 – 49 aircraft, 3 squadrons
1 Sqn
7 Sqn
9 Sqn

MiG-29 – 61-66 A/C depending on source, 3 squadrons
28 Sqn
47 Sqn
222 Sqn

MiG-21M/Bis =13 squadrons
3 Sqn
4 Sqn
15 Sqn
17 Sqn (MiG-21M)
21 Sqn
23 Sqn
26 Sqn
32 Sqn
35 Sqn (MiG-21M)
37 Sqn (MiG-21M)
51 Sqn
101 Sqn (MiG-21M)
108 Sqn (MiG-21M)

MiG-27 – 5.5 sqns
10 Sqn
18 Sqn
22 Sqn
29 Sqn
37 Sqn
222 Sqn
TACDE

Jaguar – 6 Sqn
5 Sqn
6 Sqn
14 Sqn
16 Sqn
27 Sqn
224 Sqn

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