Address fighter shortage with indigenisation

India must modernise its fighter fleet, for which it needs to curb mounting import expenditure and cultivate doubling up her indigenous combat craft enterprise. Like what China achieved after Mao’s death in October 1976. Today, the Beijing air force inventory contains 2,500 combat-capable aircraft because China went all out with indigenisation and went slow on imported craft.

OPEN SECRET: It will take several years for the IAF to operate to its sanctioned 42 squadron-fleet level. PTI

Abhijit Bhattacharyya

Author and Columnist

THE Military Balance 2001-02, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, reported that when the Indian Air Force (IAF) operated 40 fighter squadrons in 2001, Pakistan had 19 squadrons. At that time, the Chinese air force’s numbers were three times that of India and Pakistan taken together. Hence, whatever the quality of the two South Asian countries’ fighter aircraft, the sheer squadron volume of the China-Pakistan duo make it a daunting task for the IAF to deal with in a multi-front conflict.

The glib talk about confronting two hostile neighbours makes little sense because of the rapidly dwindling squadrons of IAF fighters. Successive Indian Air Force chiefs have wailed, failed and faded away, yet the establishment has remained unmoved.

Does anyone remember the then IAF Chief, NAK Browne’s words of October 2013? “Of 42 squadrons it should have, IAF now has 34.” And now, incumbent IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari stated on December 22, 2022, that the “squadron strength is down to 31” and that “fighter shortage is now critical.”

Isn’t India proving herself to be an amazing compound of contradictions, chaos and confusion? Do time and tide wait for anyone in the combat zone or, for that matter, on the nation’s enemy lines?

While the IAF plays the tragic tune of the depleted and fast-depleting strength of its fighter squadrons, a small bunch of self-serving optimists, including some NRIs, is misleadingly telling the world as to how great the economy of India will become if the rupee depreciates vis-a-vis the dollar every hour, foreign exchange reserves deplete every week, and the current account deficit mounts every month to an astronomical figure, and that what a boon it would be for Delhi if it allows Beijing to spread its wings in industry, investment, commerce, trade, banking etc.

No country of India’s shape, size and demography can ever prosper with a mounting debt, an unbridgeable deficit trade, skyrocketing negative current account, depreciating currency and unbridled entry of an enemy nation just for a few investment projects covered with a systemically entrenched espionage in the Indian hinterland.

The harsh reality is that India’s imports are several times higher than her exports, thereby making the imported foreign-made goods much more expensive, which inflicts a mounting deficit on India’s economy. Thus, whereas importing a fighter aircraft in 2001 would have been an outflow of Rs 45 a dollar, the same import will now be Rs 83 a dollar. Hence, even assuming that the unit production and sale price of the imported machine is constant at $40 million, one can very well calculate the price difference (owing to the mounting rupee-dollar exchange rate differential) between 2001 and 2023.

The reference to the fluctuating rupee-dollar exchange rate was made to make a point to modernise the fighter fleet, for which India needs to curb mounting import expenditure and cultivate doubling up her indigenous combat craft enterprise. Like what China achieved after Mao’s death in October 1976. Today, the Beijing air force inventory contains 2,500 combat-capable aircraft because China went all out with indigenisation and went slow on imported craft. Thus, it’s now an open secret that it will take several years for the IAF to operate to its sanctioned 42 squadron-fleet level.

So, how did China lure the West and endure her worst to develop indigenous fighters to stump all? Chinese indigenisation began in the early 1980s with lightning speed copying of Soviet fighters and inviting UK’s Rolls Royce and Canadian Pratt and Whitney engines, followed by American Bell and French Dauphin helicopter. The Chinese strategy was clear. Cultivate the West through the charm offensive. Follow Deng Xiaoping’s dictum: “Hide and bide” (hide intent and bide time) — show the smiling teeth and bite when you get the time.

Thus, when the Soviets were neck-deep in the Afghanistan quagmire, the Chinese silently cut a deal with US aviation giant McDonnell Douglas to co-produce MD-82 twin engine passenger jet in January 1984. During the course of the next three decades, Communist China-backed companies lured gullible western corporations to strike deal after deal to shift their production line and latest technology to Beijing’s special industrial zones. So much so that the West is now bogged down in the yellow terrain just as the way Hitler’s tanks got stuck in the slushy soil of Russia during the harsh winter of the early 1940s.

By the late 1980s, it was western aviation on eastern soil. From capitalist America’s Grumman Corporation, McDonnell Douglas to British Aerospace to French Aerospatiale, all are collaborating with the communist China in building air power. And today, the situation has reached a point of no return for the West. The West groans in agony in vain because engine makers of all variety and shade have entered China: the likes of Pratt and Whitney, General Electric, Honeywell, French Snecma, and even Germany’s MTU, thereby making the Chinese air force ‘atmanirbhar’.

The desperate callout of successive IAF chiefs needs be understood and acted upon in this grim perspective. India must accelerate indigenisation through any means; fair or foul. Morality and ethics have no place when it comes to national self-interest, especially if there is an existential threat to national security in the form of the perennially active, two-front, unholy Sino-Pak alliance.