September 9, 2003	Tuesday	Rajab 11, 1424

NEW DELHI: Less than a minute after the young air force officer roared into the sky on a moonless night, his fighter jet crashed into the Indian desert — like dozens of India’s aging military jets had crashed before.

That night in September 2001, Flight Lt. Abhijeet Anil Gadgil became yet another casualty of India’s combat jet programme, which combines second-rate pilot training with a fleet of Soviet-made MiG-21 aircraft that some critics say are outmoded.

“On that fateful moment, witnessed only by the mute and dark desert of Rajasthan, our world stopped spinning,” his mother wrote on her website. She said her 27-year-old son had been “killed by his own government.”

Kavita Gadgil has since launched a campaign to ensure greater safety on MiG-21 jets. She has taken her case to the Indian president, pleading with him to intervene.

But while at least 52 Indian air force pilots have been killed in more than 100 crashes of MiG-21s in the past six years, the jets are often not to blame, the government says.

Human error, the official reason given for Gadgil’s death, accounts for a majority of the MiG crashes — along with such things as technical defects and birds clogging up the engines.

Growing concern over the frequent MiG crashes comes as New Delhi tries to broaden its status as a regional power and flex its military muscle.

Though air force officials insist morale remains high among the fighter pilots, others doubt it.

“I can only commend the air force for keeping its morale high — if it really is,” said Satyabrata Chaturvedi, an opposition member of Parliament. “When the mother of a pilot goes to the president seeking redress, it means she has no trust in the country’s defence minister.”

But things may be changing.

Last week, the Indian Cabinet cleared a US$1.3 billion deal to buy 66 British Hawk training jets. Aviation experts say the Indians’ high rate of crashes is, in part, due to lack of proper training jets.

Gadgil, who believes her meeting with the president expedited a decision, said: “Our movement for air safety is going forward. This is a good beginning.”

The government says the MiGs are fine, and that age has little to do with safety. Defence Minister George Fernandes flew in one of the aging jets last month and said it flew well.

“If it is flown the way it should be flown, nothing can go wrong,” said Wing Cmdr. N. Harish, who flew Fernandes.

There are no official statistics on the size of India’s air combat fleet, but defence analysts put it at 800. Nearly half are MiG-21 jets, most of them introduced between 1969 and 1976. Others include the French Mirage, British Jaguar, Russian-made Sukhoi and modern MiG variants.

Indian pilots are trained on slow-moving trainers, then suddenly graduate to fly the faster and more complicated MiG-21s, said Nick Cook, an aviation consultant at the London-based Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“It is essential for air forces around the world to match the trainer aircraft to your combat aircraft,” Cook says.

But in India, plans to do that have been dogged by bureaucratic delays, hectic lobbying and allegations of corruption.

The Hawk deal, which was in negotiation for over a decade, “fulfills one of the long-standing needs of the air force. ... The induction of the (advanced jet trainer) will improve the skill levels of our pilots,” said Ajai Prasad, a top Defence Ministry official.

Plans to buy training jets were also delayed by sanctions imposed after India’s 1998 nuclear tests.

Indian pilots will still have to wait for three years before they get their first Hawks.—AP