India's Military Deficit - Part 2 (Air Force)
In the previous article , the strength of Indian Army has been discussed. Let us analyze the Indian Air Force strength in this article in 2020: 1. Fighter aircraft: A fighter aircraft covers around 2,400 km in 2 hours of flight time. With a patrol mission involving 3 aircraft covering our total boundary, the required number for 24 hours of protection is 333. By providing redundancy of 40% availability due to maintenance, this number rises to 832. We have about 575 fighter aircraft involving Rafale, Mirage 2000, MiG 29, Sukhoi-30 MKI, Jaguar, MiG 21 and LCA Tejas Mk 1. So, the ratio between required vs available is : 832 vs 576 i.e. 1. So we have slightly less fighters and need to increase the number of our fighter pilots, as our enemy fighter strength increases. Also most of the fleet needs to be upgraded within the next 10-15 years. So, there is a need to involve private players to help HAL scale up production of LCA Tejas and other fighter jets like MWF, Tejas Mk 2 and S.P.O.R.T...