French experts’ help sought on Mirage
Statesman News Service
NEW DELHI, Oct. 15. – After three Mirage-2000 mishaps within a month, the Indian Air Force has asked experts from Dassault, the French manufacturers, to visit the airbase at Gwalior.
The air force spokesman said people from Dassault were already in Gwalior checking out the aircraft after two crashes and a belly-landing in Mauritius after the exercises in South Africa.
The Mirage-2000 has been a reliable aircraft and though the air force does release crash rates, a comparison with the MiG aircraft till the late nineties shows that the multi-role plane, acquired in the mid-eighties, has been the most reliable plane of the IAF apart from the Sukhoi-30, which has never crashed.
The crashes are embarrassing for several reasons. First, India is looking to buy 12 slightly used Mirage-2000 planes from Qatar. It is also buying 10 new Mirages from France. Besides, the IAF wants to buy about 125 fighter aircraft and has budgeted Rs 42,000 crore for them. Negotiations are yet to begin, but there is a belief that the Mirage is the front-runner. Secondly, one of them crashed during an international military exercise with Singapore.
Before the series of Mirage mishaps, there have been only three crashes since they were acquired. Now, there has been three in a month. The IAF is not calling the second, a belly-landing in Mauritius, a crash, and it is believed to be a result of human error.
The other two mishaps are because of technical faults, but of different kinds.
In the past, the Mirage-2000 crash rate was below one per 10,000 flying hours while it was substantially over 2 per 10,000 hours for the MiG-21, 23 and 27 and more than 1 per 10,000 for the MiG-29.
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