From JC @ B-R forums for the links
http://mod.nic.in/samachar/june15-06/h2.htm#l2
Interview with Air Marshal AK Singh, AOC-in-C, Western Air Command
Nice info about sorties…
From Janes (PAKISTAN – PLUGGING THE GAPS, Robert Karniol JDW’s Asia-Pacific Editor
Bangkok)
About the PAF:
Indian air force ‘lacks planes’
By Nagendar Sharma
BBC News, Delhi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5094234.stm
Only half the fleet is available at any given time
Nearly 20% of Indian Air Force (IAF) pilots are doing desk jobs because of a shortage of planes, the BBC has learnt.
Classified documents seen by the BBC show that in all about a third of the IAF’s 2,500 pilots have been assigned ground and administrative duties.
Of these, 450 fit and trained pilots simply lack planes, the documents say.
Growing numbers of IAF pilots have been refused permission to quit in recent months. The Indian Air Force had “no comment” on the BBC’s findings.
The IAF has about 790 aircraft in total, including 340 fighter planes.
Only half the fleet is available at any given time while the rest are being serviced, the documents show.
By 2010 the air forces’ transport fleet will be reduced by nearly 40%.
The IAF, which currently has 34 squadrons, plans to reduce that number to 28 by 2013.
Poor utilisation
Some of the pilots put on ground and administrative jobs by the force spoke to the BBC.
They said the jobs they had been given contradicted claims by senior officials that pilots who wanted to leave the IAF could not do so as it would create a shortage of pilots.
“Whatever the authorities might say, the fact is that the air force is overstaffed in terms of pilots,” one of the pilots, who has served in the IAF for 15 years, told the BBC.
This was despite the IAF spending millions of rupees on pilot training, he said.
Another serving pilot with more than a decade of service said: “In every air force station, you would find fully competent and medically fit pilots posted to various ground administrative jobs.
“The average utilisation rate of pilots in terms of flying hours per month is very low, as much as five to six hours a month,” he added.
Earlier this year, the chief of the Indian Air Force told the BBC he was aware that some pilots wanted to leave his force, although he said the numbers were much lower than reported.
Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi put it down to India’s booming civil aviation industry and the lucrative salaries being offered by commercial airlines.
The air chief marshal said he did not begrudge the high salaries being offered to his pilots by private airlines. But he said he could not release pilots unless they were not required by the IAF.
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10-yr breather: MiG-21 can fly 1,000 hrs
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1902621.cms
Prashanth G N
BANGALORE: IAF can heave a sigh of relief – the life of the MiG-21 Bis has been enhanced. The entire fleet of
the MiG-21 Bis, tests by National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) have revealed, can now fly an additional 1,000 hours or effectively for another 10 years.
The results come after NAL’s successful completion of full-scale fatigue testing (FSFT) on the MiG-21 Bis airframe C-2090. With this a major IAF project on the total technical life enhancement (TTLE) of the MiG-21 Bis fleet has come to an end.
With the entire MiG-21 Bis fleet of 150 aircraft approaching its maximum life-span of 2,400 hours as per original certification by Russia, IAF went for the life-enhancement test at NAL.
It flew in a MiG-21 that had completed 2,400 hours and had no fatigue cracks. The question before IAF was – how much longer could the aircraft fly?
IAF requisitioned NAL to extend MiG-21 Bis life from 2,400 hours to 4,000 hours – an additional 1,600 hours. The aircraft, however, experienced cracks and break-up after around 1,000 hours of flying.
“There was no question of further testing as the aircraft had reached its limits. But it became evident that its life could be enhanced by 1,000 flying hours,” said NAL official P K Dash.
Dash further said: “What loads the aircraft experiences in flight in a whole year, we simulate on the ground in one day, checking for fatigue.
When fatigue shows up, you know that is the point up to which the aircraft can fly.”The key issue in preserving structural integrity against fatigue failure, Dash said, was to get precise answers to where and when fatigue cracks would appeared in the airframe, which, if undetected in time could lead to catastrophic structural failure.
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