New Delhi: The possible induction of F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters into the Indian Air Force (IAF), as ordained by US President Donald Trump during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hurried US trip last week, faces another formidable obstacle, besides their abnormally high acquisition and operating costs – daunting expenses to logistically maintain these advanced fifth generation combat platforms.
Each of the three single-engine F-35 variants is priced between $80-$115 million and costs around $36,000 per hour to operate. However, if commissioned into service over the next few years, the F-35 would also be the seventh fighter type to be deployed by the financially overstretched IAF, heaving under the burgeoning cost of sustaining its diverse combat, transport and rotary wing assets, to ensure their operational availability.
Presently, the IAF deploys Russian Sukhoi Su-30MKIs and upgraded MiG-29Ms, French Mirage 2000Hs, retrofitted to Mirage 2000-5 standards, and Rafales, in addition to the Soviet-era Mikoyan MiG-21, Anglo-French SEPECAT Jaguars and variants of the indigenously developed Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA).
However, the two remaining upgraded MiG-21 ‘Bison’ ground attack squadrons at Bikaner and Surartgarh, comprising around 40 platforms, are due to be ‘number-plated’ or retired sometime later in the year, reducing the IAF’s fighter types to six. But, if the induction of the F-35s was approved by Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP-led) government, the IAFs fighter-type numbers would, once again, revert to seven. These could even increase to eight, if the Ministry of Defence (MoD) opted to operationalise its long-pending option to acquire 114 Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) and proceed imminently with their procurement.
The MRFA procurement envisages importing a squadron of 18 fighters in flyaway condition from a shortlisted foreign original equipment manufacturer (OEM), seven of who had responded to the IAF’s April 2019 request for information (RfI) by offering eight fighter types. The remaining 96 platforms would be built indigenously, via a collaborative venture between the qualified OEM and a domestic strategic partner (SP) from either the private or public sector, with progressively enhanced levels of indigenisation in a deal, currently estimated at around $25 billion.
It is, however, unclear for now whether the potential F-35 buy would be a ‘stand-alone’ purchase, or morphed into the MRFA acquisition. Some recent news reports have suggested that the F-35s were to be acquired, much like the 36 Dassault Rafale fighters were in 2016 via an arbitrary announcement by Modi in Paris. Quoting unnamed official sources these reports also indicated that the IAF and the government were looking upon the F-35s as a pricey ‘stop-gap’ combat platform, till India developed and series built its own 5th Generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) in the late 2030s.
That being said, the F-35s will, if inducted, only exacerbate what senior IAF officials refer to as the ‘logistic nightmare’ of the fighter fleet with its diverse and assorted platforms.
Over the years, successive Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and defence parliamentary committee reports have castigated the IAF for the poor operational readiness of its platforms, especially fighters, its high rate of aircraft on ground (AoG) and limited flying hours, but to little avail. Senior IAF officers, declining to be identified, said these shortcomings were caused ‘almost exclusively’ by Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) complications which, collectively had hindered IAF attempts at evolving from a largely tactical force to a strategic one, capable of power projection and executing out-of-area exigencies.
In comparison to the IAF’s assortment of fighters, the US Air Force (USAF) principally operates four fighter types-F15s, F16s, F-22s and F-35s and some of their variants, all with an unusually high amount of ‘commonality’, while the Russian Air Force similarly employs seven primary types of combat aircraft – Su-25/27/30/35/57s and MiG-29/31s. These two Russian fighter models too rated a high degree of component uniformity between them, rendering their MRO relatively inexpensive and significantly less arduous compared with the IAFs.
France, on the other hand, deploys two fighter types – Dassault Mirage 20005/Ds and Rafales – but is in the process of phasing out the former and replacing them with the latter. The two fighters fielded by Britain’s Royal Air Force include the Eurofighter Typhoon and the F-35.
Consequently, a two-star veteran said that the veritable ‘gallery’ of IAF fighters was not only expensive to sustain and maintain, but hugely traumatic to effectively manage. “Standardisation is the solution, but that is unlikely to come about for many decades,” he warned, adding that the possible advent of F-35s would only complicate MRO matters beyond belief.
The perennial problems of spares for the twin-engine MiG-29 ‘Fulcrum’ and Su-30MKI ‘Flanker’ fighters, for instance, topped the agenda whenever a senior Indian defence delegation visited Russia, in what remains an unchanged litany. This was exacerbated further following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s when many of the defence manufacturing units and factories were located in breakaway republics like Ukraine, which were inimical to Moscow.
This, in turn, spawned a severe paucity of spares, which were not only difficult to source, but also prohibitively expensive, as some of the production lines had closed down due to little or no demand. It also resulted in India’s military, including the IAF, obtaining spares of doubtful quality from the open market which, in some instances, even led to equipment failure.
Industry officials said these problems could have easily been mitigated by the indigenisation of critical spares, but this did not fructify to a large extent and remains a work in progress. Instances of fighters being grounded for months for lack of spares or equipment being hauled to Russia for overhaul at inflated costs, endure but had rudely come to a virtual halt in recent years following the war in Ukraine.
However, the frequent predicament of maintaining assorted fighters and other IAF platforms is directly linked simply to financial resources, which remain a rapidly depreciating asset. In fiscal year 2020-21, for instance, the IAF was allocated Rs 299.62 billion in revenue expenditure of which Rs 91.10 billion was apportioned to stores, which includes MRO for all of its platforms. But astonishingly this latter store’s outlay was Rs 6.08 billion less than the Rs 97.18 billion allocated to stores in FY19-20, further aggravating the IAF’s financial woes concerning its MRO commitments.
Analysts anticipate that the IAF’s logistic troubles will magnify manifold in the event of it acquiring 114 MRFA, over 200 Tejas LCA variants to make up for rapidly depleting fighter squadron numbers and possibly the F-35s. Instead of its sanctioned strength of 42 fighter squadrons, the IAF presently operates merely 29-30 but this number is expected to shrink further over the next two-three years after some MiG-21s and Jaguars were phased out. These shrinking numbers had prompted Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh to declare in December that the IAF needed the MRFA ‘as of yesterday’ but did not comment on their maintainability.
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MRO hitches, especially regarding spares were not confined to IAF fighters alone, but also assailed its helicopter and transport fleets which in turn, impinged on the force’s wider platform serviceability issues.
As far back as August 2017, the CAG had severely indicted the IAF for ‘low’ serviceability and ‘poor’ availability of its Ilyushin Il-76 ‘Candid’ transport aircraft fleet and Il-78 ‘Midas’ mid-air tankers that were adversely impacting the force’s operational efficiency, due to its inability to source spares from Russia. The CAG divulged that the average availability of the IAF’s 14 Il-76s between 2010-16 was just 38%, whilst that of its six Il-78s for the same period was 49%, significantly lower than the ‘desired’ 70% serviceability levels. Besides, the avionics of both platforms dated back to 1985, as a consequence of which they were “not permitted to operate in international flying corridors,” the CAG had stated.
IAF fighter aircraft serviceability, on the other hand, had averaged no more than 50-60% for decades, significantly below ideal levels compared with the French Air Force for instance which was over 75%. As one senior veteran irreverently put it, acquiring F-35s for the IAF would be akin to a person buying a Rolls Royce car, but with limited resources to run and maintain it, he or she would be forced into operating it sparingly, merely to flaunt it as a badge of ownership.