Anybody know what the number “40” on the Cope India patch means? Mirage sqn numbers are 1 and 7.

Harry,

TCL (Yes, Transport Combat Leader) and PAI (Ground attack course for Junior pilots),

😮 what do the TCL guys practice? carpet bombing from An-32s perhaps? 😎

can you be more specific in the difference between FSL and PAI? what about QFI – how are these guys different from the others mentioned?

thx

PS: do you have the scan of Dhruv @ Siachen, which was there in the HAL catalog this defexpo.

seahawk,

I dont have anything concrete to add, but I will attempt to work out more stuff from some public reports. Anyway please continue to provide any more statistics you might have regarding hours, sortie rates, and other such operational details of the Luftwaffe.

As far as supersonic flying is concerned, there are rules about that here too but probably they are a lot more relaxed comapred to the west. What I know is that the IAF has exclusive air spaces in which it is supposed to fly and that all flying must be done above 20,000 ft. You cannot go supersonic at all if you are over cities.

I do not know whether the target ranges in India are located within the air base perimeters, are located in distant locations or a mixture of both. This page here describes an airpower display at the Sidhwan Khas range (commonly known as the SK range):

http://mod.nic.in/samachar/oct15-03/html/ch11.htm

We will take this exercise as an example since we want to understand how it is done in reality rather than make our own hypothesis. The target is SK range (30 Km W of Ludhiana) it is under the command of AFS Halwara, but I do not know whether it is located within its boundries. For our convinience we will assume it is.

The strike packages on the occasion were:

(1) 23 Sqn (Panthers) MiG-21Bis took off from Phalodi AFS (Suratgarh) and made a single pass over the target.

(2) 17 Sqn (Golden Arrows) MiG-21Bis came in from Bhatinda AFS in Punjab

(3) 220 Sqn (Desert Tigers) MiG-23BN from Halwara itself

(4) 153 HU (Mighty Armour) Mi-17-1V from ???

(5) 125 HS (Gladiators) Mi-35 from Pathankot AFS

Co-ordinates of the air bases involved are as follows:

Halwara AFS [30°44’54.72″ N] [075°37’47.23″ E]
Phalodi AFS [29°23’15.99″ N] [073°54’14.12″ E]
Bhatinda AFS [30°16’12.50″ N] [074°45’20.78″ E]
Pathankot AFS [32°14’01.60″ N] [075°38’04.66″ E]

Distances involved on the basis of above coordianates:

Phalodi-Halwara = 224 Km (the article says “more than 250 Km away”) :confused:
Bhatinda-Halwara = 99 Km
Pathankot-Halwara = 165 Km

These distances are “as the crow flies” i.e. they do not take into consideration the effort required to climb to altitude. Also, the actual distance will be much higher because the pilots always take a circituos route to the target to avoid giving it an early alarm.

Time taken to travel 500 km at different uniform velocities:

Now we come to our purpose of this entire calculation.

We assume that the attackers are MiG-21s from 23 Sqn flying in from Phalodi, which is the farthest from Halwara in this particular exercise. I assume that they will fly at a constant velocity thrughout the flight and will come back to their home base. I have taken an extra 50 km to compensate for time taken for target acquisition and engagement and the zig-zag route.

0650 Km/h = 46.2 min
0700 Km/h = 42.9 min
0750 Km/h = 40.0 min
0800 Km/h = 37.5 min
0850 Km/h = 35.3 min
0900 Km/h = 33.3 min
1000 Km/h = 30.0 min
1050 Km/h = 28.6 min
1100 Km/h = 27.3 min
1150 Km/h = 26.1 min

Which is matches to what we had speculated earlier in this thread. 🙂

Faults with the study:

(1) The airspeeds have been randomnly chosen and are only estimates. Anyone with more accurate ideas?

(2) We do not know for sure what are the exact ranges of the aircraft when flown at different speeds.

(3) We do not know the time/distance required to acquire and engage the target.

Notes:

Coordinates from: http://www.scramble.nl/in.htm

Program to calculate distances: http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/distance.html

20-35 minutes is nonsense. You’re talking about the endurance of an F-86. A Mig-21’s sortie lasts 45 min. or more depending on their configuration that includes drop tanks.

I could be wrong. I am talking of MiG-21s only, and that too we are not talking of max endurance because fighters never fly to that limit in peace time unless training especially for it; i.e. you do leave some fuel in your tank when you land.

Lets work this backwards – typically a MiG-21 pilot would do 15-18 hours per month. Assuming he flies once everyday (my estimate) in a month, it would translate to an average time of 30-36 minutes per sortie.

If we take 45 minutes as the sortie time and 30 sorties per month, we will get an annual hour figure of 270 hrs minimum. Which is outrageus – or it simply could be that their sortie rates are much lower than 30/month.

If you want an explicit mention from the cheif and no estimations, recall the interview from rediff where he said that the IAF’s overall flying hrs was 15% or so less than the USAF’s flying hrs.

it would be great if you could find me a link, i seem to have missed this.

seahawk,

A normal sortie for an F-4F for example is 60-120 minutes.

How many sorties would they do per month? I assume 90 minutes per flight and 200-220 hours annual, this would give us a rate of only 11-12 sorties per month for every pilot.

My guess is that either they practice a lot of different stuff everytime they get into the air or that the figure you quote is for peactime CAPs around the base – which I guess should be on the higher side.

If you add take-off, climb to alltitude, fly to the range, return to base, fly the break and land, then the range must be extremly close nad India is a large country. Does any airbase has a range directly nearby ??

Dont these fighter jocks fly supersonic? :confused: I guess ranges will mostly within the same state – i dont think you would be flying across the entire country every time….

You state that the average sortie for a MIG-21 is about 20 minutes long. Why is that the case and what can be trained with in 20 minutes ??

Thats what I think I read somewhere – yes it does sound too short. My bad; 25-35+ mins is a better figure. There are longer sorties ofcourse, especially when you have drop tanks.

I speculate that the MiG-21’s short range might be the reason. Hence you find that find that figure very odd, especially when comapred to NATO aircraft like Tornado and Phantoms. Now even if an aircraft can fly for 90 mins does not mean it has to, generally they get into the air for a specific mission, like putting in some rockets into a dummy tank and coming back instantly. If you make multiple passes then you fly longer.

Since the IAF has IL-78s now, Su-30s have flown 10 (ten) Hour missions that start from Pune and fly over Andaman Islands 😮 I have no clue what their logs say about flight time at the end of the year, Harry may know.

In some exercises you are assigned targets on ranges that are on the edge of your endurance limit, while on other occasions your target is less than 10 minutes away. CAPs in peace time locations might also be longer than 45+ minutes (my guess).

any white man seen prowling around is automatically a CIA spy

and any brown man is automatically a Pakistani! 😀

i have heard of a number of cases when folks would spy around bases in their child hood hoping that their age would provide immunity. But when a uniformed man taps you on your shoulder when you are blissfully busy watching the hangars you just wish you were home in bed…

Phil Camp and Simon Watson

Since I copy-posted a post by Phil Camp here earlier, i think i am responsible for anything unworthy said about him here. They (Phil and Simon) have been photographing military aviation IIRC since the 1960s. I never had the pleasure of knowing them personally though. They have travelled the world photographing air forces.

Phil Camp may not be Peter Steinnmann of photography or the Arthur Hubers of Spotting :p , but is an experienced professional. His opinion belongs to him, and may not be gospel truth – but one should not reject it outright. IMHO his opinion is as good as anyone else’s on this forum.

Please dont consider his words as “proof” – an informed opinion would be better.

Please id the sukhoi’s loadout. One of them seems to be an ACMI pod.