The Trouble With India\'s MIG-21 Fighter Jets

Bikas Das/Associated Press MIG-21 fighter jets parked at the Kalaikunda Air Force Station in West Bengal.

On July 15, a Russian-made MIG-21 Bison fighter jet, operated by the Indian Air Force, crashed while attempting to land at the Uttarlai air base in the Barmer district of Rajasthan. This was the second MIG-21 crash, at the very same air base, in two months. However, unlike in the previous accident, which had no casualties, this time the pilot was killed. The crash has been attributed to pilot error.

Only a day after the second accident in Rajasthan, a serving officer of the Indian Air Force, Wing Commander Sanjeet Singh Kaila, who himself is a MIG-21 crash survivor, petitioned the courts for the scrapping of the entire fleet. Wing Commander Kaila has contended that flying the aircraft has violated his right to work in a safe environment. The wing commander was involved in a crash during a flight exercise in 2005 after his aircraft caught fire. He delayed in ejecting to safety from his burning aircraft because he was flying over a populated region. His accident also took place in Rajasthan.

The MIG-21, which marked 50 years of service with the Indian Air Force in April this year, has been the backbone of the air force's fleet. The aircraft has participated in every major conflict involving India since 1963, and still forms the bedrock for most of the air force's operations.

Even as the MIG-21 stands tall in its performance for the Indian armed forces, its safety record, specifically in the past decade, has come under harsh criticism. A few months back,  India's defense minister, A.K. Antony, said that out of 29 crashes over the past three years in the Indian Air Force, 12 have been MIG-21 airframes. Two more MIG-21s have crashed since Mr. Antony put out those numbers.

Because of the MIG's poor safety record, the aircraft has been given grim tags in the public sphere like the “Flying Coffin” and the “Widow Maker.” More than 170 Indian Air Force pilots have been killed in MIG-21 accidents since 1970. These accidents have also resulted in the deaths of 40 civilians.

The Indian Air Force has inducted more than 1,200 MIG variants in its fleet since 1963, when it was first used by the military. Currently, at least 252 MIG-21s are known to be operational in the air force, according to the Indian military enthusiast site Bharat Rakshak, including the latest upgraded version, the Bison.

The aircraft is the most-produced combat jet in aviation history since World War II. Over 11,000 air frames of the original MIG variant and its copies, like the Chinese-made Chengdu J-7, have been built since 1959.

When the MIG-21, given the reporting name “Fishbed” by NATO, reigned supreme in the 1960s and 1970s, many Western bloc fighters like the American F-104 Starfighter and the English Electric Lightning were also plagued by high accident rates. According to James J. Halley, author of “Broken Wings: Post War R.A.F. Accidents,” more than 100 Lightning jets crashed out of the 345 in service with Britain between 1959 and 1988.

India has depended a lot on the MIG-21 for maintaining air superiority in and around its neighborhood. The success of the aircraft has been recognized globally. According to the authors David Nicolle and Tom Cooper in “Arab MIG 19 and MIG 21 Units in Combat,” India even provided MIG pilot training to countries like Iraq. Mr. Nicolle and Mr. Cooper say, contrary to popular beliefs, Iraqi pilots in the 1970s were trained more on the MIG-21s by India than by Pakistan or the Soviet Union.

Having served with over 45 air forces worldwide, the MIG-21's low operational and maintenance cost has earned it the nickname “The People's Fighter.” India, which produced the aircraft domestically after a transfer agreement with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, was manufacturing a single unit at a cost of just a little over 30 million rupees. This achievement was seen as a boon for the Air Force in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Indian economy was very small compared to what it is today.

Critics of the MIG-21 question the quality of the fleet's maintenance. Wing Commander Kaila has alleged in his petition that poor maintenance work executed by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, which manufactured all the domestically made MIG jets, had contributed to the failure of his aircraft. HAL has maintained a steely silence.

Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik, the former chief of the Indian Air Force, fiercely defended air force's use of the jet fighter. “I have flown more than 2,000 hours in various variants of the MIG-21, from the earliest Type 77, the updated Type 96 and the Bison. The aircraft is the finest of its kind and it is not correct to call it the ‘Flying Coffin' or the ‘Widow Maker.'

“Whenever an aircraft leaves, it is 100 percent serviceable,” he said. “An unserviceable aircraft never gets out. Component failures may occur within three minutes into a flight or not occur for many sorties. Any issue with the MIG-21 gets magnified because much of the fleet comprises of this type.”

The availability of spare parts has also been an area of concern for India's aging fleet, and the country has looked at various cheaper options in countries like Israel and former Soviet states like Ukraine. Defense authorities in Moscow have previously warned India not to cut corners in purchasing authentic parts. The Russian ambassador in New Delhi, Alexander Kadakin, has said that India should not be surprised if aircrafts meet with accidents if it continues to use spares from outside Russia.

During the earlier part of this decade, the sudden jump for junior pilots from trainer aircrafts like the HAL Kiran, an indigenous jet trainer built in 1964 by Hindustan Aeronautics, to the MIG-21 was seen as too big a change for pilots to cope with. The Kiran, which was a subsonic jet with a maximum speed of 201 miles per hour, was unable to prepare young and inexperienced pilots for the raw power of the supersonic MIG, which has a maximum speed of 1,468 miles per hour.

This jump between the two air frames was seen at the time as taxing, and the treatment of the MIG doubling as an advanced jet trainer was neither “optimal” nor “cost effective,” according to experts such as retired wing commander K S Suresh. In 2004, India ordered 66 BAE Hawk advanced jet trainers from Britain, with a follow-up order of 57 more aircraft in 2010 to plug the gaps in pilot training. The decision for these purchases was fast tracked because of rising public dissent over frequent MIG-21 crashes.

The modernization of the Indian Air Force has been excruciatingly slow because of the long process of approving procurements and irregularities in deals, thanks to red tape and corruption. Controversies like the recent bribery scandal on a deal for helicopters worth $750 million have constantly plagued the Indian armed forces.

Other than bureaucratic and financial irregularities, India's indigenous defense programs, such as the Light Combat Aircraft, which is slated to replace the MIG-21 fleet, are running decades behind schedule. Meanwhile new deals like the Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft program, won by Dassault Aviation Group of France, are still on the negotiation table, adding to unending delays in modernization efforts.

The Indian Air Force currently operates 34 fighter squadrons against a sanctioned strength of 42. The MIG-21 will be required to continue to fill in the gaps over the next few years, as India's military modernization crawls forward at a negligible pace.

Kabir Taneja is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.