IAF, DRDO, MoD, HAL, CABS (add whoever you want to blame) spent 20000 crores of Indian taxpayer money to modify Embraer jets in to AEW&C aircraft for IAF.
Large scale induction was dropped for mostly the usual reasons and only 3 platforms are operational with IAF. This small no. was a massive waste of Indian money and efforts spanning decades. The end-user also added quite a few demands during the development, which led to delays and cost overruns, but that’s a story for another time.
Funny bit is that Brazil has 8 aircraft in service with ongoing incremental upgrades. Greece has 4 and even Mexico has 3. And India which spent most amount of money on it, has only 3. 1 of them was a testing prototype with the lab for some time.
None of the other operators face any sort of serious existential threat (except Greece from Turkey) like India does and have smaller air forces. Yet have more AEW aircraft than IAF.
If the incompetence of all stake holders was limited to just this, it’d have been not too bad. But we see the same asinine decision making with combat aircraft, transports, helicopters, refuelers, tanks, APCs, artillery, assault rifles, body armour, submarines and every other thing of importance.
It was all fine if all they had to do was to fight pakis every 25-30 years. Our govt (includes netas, babooze, uniforms) would have sent some young men to die, awarded a few of them medals and milked their avoidable deaths and suffering for their own personal glory and other benefits. Citizens would have felt some sadness and pride and would have moved on with their own lives without asking any questions.
But with imminent Chinese threat, USA being USA and pakis becoming worse version of pakis with each passing year, Indian armed forces and related entities show no reals signs of change.
I know I whine a lot and some others even more so. But things are bad and will get much worse if there is no change.
The joke doesn’t ends here unfortunately.
One of many major late demands that IAF put forward was addition of mid-air refuelling. None of other similar AEW&C aircraft have it and don’t exactly need it (mostly) either due to human endurance issues.
This led to huge cost and time overruns.
So one would think that IAF has less AEW&C, but can stretch their utility with mid-air refuelling. Right?
Guess how many mid-air refuelers IAF has inducted. Last I heard, talks were going on to get ONE American KC-135 on lease. The whole American fleet was grounded a few months back due to structural problems. There was so much anger from the usual suspects over Dhruv recently. Yet not even one of those chamchas and dalaals said anything about it.
Why no expansion of existing IL-76 based refueler fleet with IAF? Because it spends more time in maintenance than air, just like AWACS.
Vested interests used the crash of older Avro based AWACS to stop that project too. Crashes and setbacks happen and other countries use them to learn and improve, not abandon the whole project.
Chinese lost KJ-200 (and perhaps KJ-500 too) prototype, American E-2A Hawkeye saw multiple issues and grounding of whole fleet. Yet enough support was provided and these aircraft and their variants are being used in high numbers and even exported.
But here, the whole program was dumped leading to even more waste of taxpayer money. CAG monkeys do a lot of bs criticism, but apparently missed this.
The hugely expensive IL-76 based AWACS that IAF inducted after burying of Avro AWACS were originally meant for China. Israel was forced to sell the system to India after US vetoed the deal. Now these white elephant aircraft spend more time on ground than air.
Israelis also demanded an eye-watering amount of USD 1.3 billion for 2 more in 2017 which led to Indian government dropping the deal.
Who suffers eventually?
Dedicated soldiers who need the equipment and honest tax-payers.
Who benefits?
Reference for some data:
- The Incredible Journey of Indian AWACS by DRDO.
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