In the fourth of a five-part series, the IAF assures the Standing Committee on Defence that its fighter fleet is not too diverse and each different fighter type has its own use.
Business Standard, 1st April 2024
As is the case with the Army and the Navy, the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) budget allocations for the Financial Year 2022-23 (FY23) are significantly lower than its projections, according to the 36th Report of the 17th Lok Sabha’s Standing Committee on Defence.
In five out of the last six years, the IAF’s revenue allocations were 20-42 per cent less than what it projected as its demands for those years.
The situation is even bleaker for the IAF’s capital allocations, in which the IAF received between 40 per cent to 67 per cent less than its projected figure.
While the defence ministry expects that the IAF’s order for 123 Tejas light combat aircraft (LCA) will galvanize the indigenous aerospace manufacturing eco-system, the Standing Committee on Defence asked the IAF if it was comfortable with inducting so many varieties of fighters.
The report quotes an IAF officer as responding: “In every air force, we will have a mix of all types of aircrafts because every aircraft has a certain role. You cannot have all aircrafts of one class. As far as LCA is concerned, it does fit in. We have to remember that it was designed as a replacement for MIG-21. The aircraft has come up quite well. It is meeting those requirements quite well. Yes, if you ask, everybody would like to have all fifth- generation aircraft. But we have to see what we can get, what is available in the market.”
The IAF officer also pointed out the need to give a fillip to our own aerospace industry.
“We also have to see what will happen tomorrow. If we keep buying [fighter aircraft] from the open market, we will never become self-reliant. So, we need to give a push to our own industry also. We need to hold their hands and the IAF is committed towards that. We will make a happy mix and that is why we are going in for a MRFA (multi-role fighter aircraft) contract for 114 aircraft,” said the IAF officer.
Asked about the LCA project delays, an IAF representative told the Standing Committee: “The last (fighter) aircraft that we designed was the Marut (in the 1950s). So, after a gap of 30 years plus, we are now trying to make a fighter aircraft in-house. We took a giant leap. LCA is a generation 4-plus aircraft. We could have gone for a third- generation aircraft with the conventional controls and with rudimentary dials and old avionics but we had to catch up with (global) technology. It was a very good step, though we have taken longer than we should have.”
The IAF officer said this has resulted in having to overcome road-blocks, but in the end, in India developing its own design and manufacturing systems
“We were learning our lessons. We cannot call them failures but there are a lot of road blocks. Then, the sanctions came in after our nuclear test (in 1998). That caused a lot of drawbacks. That is where we started thinking that we should have most of the technologies in-house. But the fly-by-wire system of that aircraft and the entire control laws have been written by Indians in-house. In the avionics, the entire architecture is Indian, and it has been revised once fully. That means what we conceived in the beginning and what we are flying today are two different architectures. The one we are flying today is called federated architecture. If I can use the word, it is, plug and fly. You can integrate any new weapon or any new system much more easily now,” stated the IAF pilot.
The Standing Committee sought an explanation on the sharp decline in this year’s BE projection, compared to the previous year, and was told it was due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“Our projection last year was Rs. 85,000 crore and we finally got allocation of Rs. 57,000 crore which we consumed. This year, the projection itself has been less because of this Russia-Ukraine war as some of our deliveries are not taking place. We have already been told that those deliveries will not take place, so, we have taken that part of the component out,” the IAF officer said.
Table: Revenue and capital funding for IAF: demand-supply gap
(Figures in Rupees crores)
Year | Revenue | Capital | ||||
Projection | Expenditure | Shortfall | Projection | Expenditure | Shortfall | |
2018-19 | 35,261 | 28,291 | 20% | 77,695 | 36,452 | 54% |
2019-20 | 34,850 | 30,124 | 14% | 74,895 | 45,104 | 40% |
2020-21 | 43,904 | 32,825 | 25% | 66,207 | 58,208 | 11% |
2021-22 | 44,993 | 34,375 | 25% | 77,141 | 53,217 | 30% |
2022-23 | 50,692 | 29,214^ | 42% | 85,323 | 27,632 | 67% |
2023-24 | 68,082 | 44,346 | 33% | 58,808 | 58,269 | -- |
(Source: Standing Committee on Defence, Report No.36)
^ Figures up to December 2022
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