September 26, 2025 • 63 mins
The Indian Air Force has retired the MiG-21 – the iconic Soviet-era fighter aircraft—that became the most produced supersonic jet in history and the backbone of the IAF. The Mig-21 trained generations of Indian Air Force pilots and defended India’s skies for six decades.
Recorded around Mig-21’s farewell at Air Force Station, Chandigarh, this special episode of In Our Defence with national security expert Sandeep Unnithan dives into the jet’s history, upgrades, combat stories, the debate over safety, and its legacy.
Host Dev Goswami and Sandeep unpack how a 1960s Soviet interceptor became India’s backbone, why it attracted the “flying coffin” label, what the Bison upgrade really changed, and how the MiG-21’s dominance shaped IAF training and doctrine.
Tune in!
Image of the first women IAF fighter pilots- Avani Chaturvedi, Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh
Produced by Taniya Dutta
Sound Mix by Aman Pal
Recorded around Mig-21’s farewell at Air Force Station, Chandigarh, this special episode of In Our Defence with national security expert Sandeep Unnithan dives into the jet’s history, upgrades, combat stories, the debate over safety, and its legacy.
Host Dev Goswami and Sandeep unpack how a 1960s Soviet interceptor became India’s backbone, why it attracted the “flying coffin” label, what the Bison upgrade really changed, and how the MiG-21’s dominance shaped IAF training and doctrine.
Tune in!
Image of the first women IAF fighter pilots- Avani Chaturvedi, Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh
Produced by Taniya Dutta
Sound Mix by Aman Pal
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to season three of In Our Defense, the podcast
that takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
This is in Our Defense.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
This week is going to be a very special episode.
We're going to talk about one of the most iconic
fighter jets ever made in the world, fighter jet that
at one point was the Indian Air Force, the Make
twenty one. We're recording this a couple of days before
the Make twenty one is formally retired in a ceremony
that will be held at the Chandigard Air Force Base.
(00:55):
In fact, I think the episode will come out on
the evening of the ceremony. The ceremon it takes place
on Friday morning, and this episode should be out both
on YouTube and audio by Friday evening. And this gives
me the perfect opportunity to dive deep into the history
of this aircraft that to be fair, when I was
(01:17):
growing up, made some very bad and terrible headlines. I
think the media was to blame for a major part
of it. And I'm in the media, so I can
I can say that with some sort of surety. When
it gave the mid twenty one, I would say, nonsense
labels such as the flying Coffin and stuff like that.
(01:37):
But what makes this aircraft so legendary? Why was it
once the bulk of the Indian Air Force? Why did
the Air Force take so long to retire it? For
this and more, I have with me Sandy.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Goody good to be back.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Excited about the topic and absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Mid twenty one it always takes you back into time,
you know, actually time machine yea.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Literally the Air Force has had it for sixty odd
years now, and we'll talk a lot about this and
the fact that why even at sixty two years of
being in operation, it does not still make it an
old fighter jet that you would think about. But before
we get into all of that, a couple of things
you were talking about before before we begin recording some
(02:21):
deep and I think I want to have that piece
of trivia out for our viewers and listeners. In fact,
we won't have that trivia out right now, but we'll
talk about the question in fact, is that what country
and this is the Western country by the way, is
going to be the largest operator of the Mike twenty
one after the Air Force retires them, as hasitat them
(02:42):
actually by the time.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
As episodes of this morning.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And also what is the connection of the Make twenty
one to Top Gun, not the movie, but the flying school.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
On which the movie was based.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
We'll talk about that towards the end of the episode,
so please stay with us.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
We will be a fascinating episode.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Something I want to start actually by talking about Russian
jets in general, because I think Russian fighter jets just
look damn sexy.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
You know, if I.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Were to compared them to like Western fighters, they seem
to have character. Whether you have the make money one
of the iconic nos, whether you have that hulk of
a sukuoi or you have that I actually found on
during my research, the forty seven that never actually was
in service, but an experimental plane that had forwards weat.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yes, yes, I'm at the pilot.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I'm in the test pilot by the way.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, So do you agree with me that Russian fighter
jets seem to have a very sort of a characteristic design.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
They've not just Russian fighter jets. Every single Russian military
hardware has a warlike look about it, okay, right there,
whether it is the missile boats, whether it's the destroyers,
the tanks, the assault rifles, and of course the fighter jets.
They look like fighter jets. They look like war machines,
you know. And because I'm I'm a Trekkie, I'm a
(04:02):
Star Trek fan. And if you see in Star Trek,
also the coolest ships, the most menacing looking ships up
from the Klingon Federation, right, they have the deadliest looking
birds of prey. And you see a bird of prey
versus a US S enterprise, a very harmless looking kind
of thing, right, But when you see the kling On
(04:23):
bird of prey, it's a menacing aircraft. Similarly, the Russian Federation,
the Soviet Union, their aircraft look really deadly, I mean,
you know. And to cut a long story short, a
couple of years back, I was in Moscow and someone said,
there's a new sou fifty seven on static display. You
want to go and see it? I said, hell, yes,
what are you asking me about? And when I saw
(04:45):
the sou fifty seven. I have to tell you they've
had an out of body experience right when I saw
the aircraft and I compared it to that scene in Firefox.
You know, it's it's that Cold War era movie. I
don't know how many of you've heard about it, Clint
Eastwood film where CLINTE. Eastwood is smuggled into the Soviet
Union and he steals their newest jet, which is the
(05:07):
mid thirty one. I had that same feeling when Clint
Eastwood actually sees that machine for the first time. You know,
it's like a really menacing looking aircraft, and yere, this
S fifty seven was that that airbase. It's one of
the coolest looking aircraft that I've seen. And you know,
if you remember this movie again, I know a lot
of Hollywood, you know, plugging a lot of Hollywood movies.
(05:29):
There was that Hollywood film that was a sequel to
Independence Day where they had these the Americans flying these
new stealth jet inspired by alien technology. They used the
SOO fifty seven for them simply because that jet looked
so menacing, you know, and all the aircraft had that
(05:50):
have that thing around them, whether it's the sou fifty seven,
or it's the Sooth thirty. I remember seeing the South
thirty for the first time. It looked like a klingon
bird of praise, you know exactly the weight, it's like
hunched down, nose drooping and all that. So Russians, you
have to give it to them. The bomber fleet. I mean,
just look at the TU one forty four, look at
(06:10):
the T one sixty. Uh. They all look so menacing
black jack and all very very They're menacing at the
same time, very elegant. You know that. It's a combination
that's very hard to describe. But for all of you,
you know, fighter buffs, I'm sure a lot of you
agree with this. The Russians designed the most lethal looking egg. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
In fact, you know, I'm going to show you a
pictures on the band.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
I'm going to have my producer show it to our
viewers on YouTube and for our people or who listen
to us an audio. We have a link in the show description.
It's an image from the Chundergird Air Force Museum of
the Bamak and Maha saying the first three women fighter
pilots and it's a lovely, lovely love oh yes.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yes, of course.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Then in the front of a twentyway it is.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Possibly one of the best photographs I've seen for Make
twenty one with their pilots and all that. You know,
apart from the fact that it's a very big it's
a red letter day for the Air Force. Three Make
twenty one fighter pilots, very beautifully taken photograph. It's it's
everything that the machine is all about, and you have
this new thing. You know, it's like the Air Force
then the Air Force now now it's like spanning. It's
(07:20):
a generation spanning photograph.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And imotually give you to the to the museum over
there because I think this actually is the best poster
they have over there. And when you look at the
history share history of what the Air Force may have
to display it for people over there, and they've managed
to put this post up there, I literally hatstoff to them.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
It's a fantastic image.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
People should definitely take a look at it, and if
you aren't, undergut would definitely take a look at the
post Into your life speaking of tundygard something before we
actually again go into Make twenty one, they also have
a simulator Make twenty one simulator, so you're talking about
war machines elegance. But I'll tell you something. I sat
in that simulator. That cockpit is damn damn uncomfortable. It
(08:04):
is cramped as hell. There is no place to move
your leg, there is no place, it seems to move
your head.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
How the hell do you fly that thing? Good question, Dave.
You know, the first time I saw a Make twenty one,
that is exactly my question. Where do you fit a
pilot into this? You know? The mid twenty one to
me is nothing but a It's an engine with a
pilot strapped onto it, and it's got two wings, right,
it's just made for brute speed, and it's got a radar,
(08:33):
of course, it's got a radar in the nose, thankfully.
And it's like a pilot's trapped to a very fast
flying machine. That's what it is. That's you know, Russian design,
you know philosophy. For you, they first put all the
weapons and the equipment, and then they fit the people
into it. You know, for them, the mission is so important,
right right, it's and it's you know, whether you look
(08:56):
at your T ninety tanks, T seventy two tanks, they're
all like that, extremely cramped, no room for creature, comforts, nothing,
You can barely stretch your legs. Right, it's the The
operators just just fit into those spaces. And it's strange
because I have friends who are like six feet two
and they rail about, you know, the T seventy two
(09:19):
and T ninety tanks. I said, But you know, my
friend can lovers, I said, Bob said, your install has
been how to help you fit inside? Is a tank? Commander?
Is a commander regiment? How do you fit into this?
It says, Oh, I have to tell you. Here's the
best things to say about Russian equipment. You know, whether
it's seventy to ninety and all, I guess it's it just,
(09:40):
you know, grows on you. And you you know, you
don't expect all these things from Western equipment, but you
two from the the Russian equipment. You expect them to
be hardy. You expect it to be uh you know,
uh takes a beating, Uh takes a licking, continuous slicking,
that kind of thing. So they make the most outstanding
(10:03):
war machines. The electronics might not be as robust, but
when it comes to survivability and all that, it's Russian
and Soviet equipment. Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Once again, I mean if people engine they should definitely
try out this similator because that'll give you a very actual,
real experience of what a cockpit of FOR twenty one
is actually like. And I think also that's perhaps where
because you know, back when I was appearing for my
NBA exam and I went for the SSB, I found
out of the Air Force has very strict measurement requirements
(10:34):
for fighter pilot, for people who want to enter the
fighter's team. Your legs have to be a certain length,
your chest has to be so you your tors a
certain length, your height has to be a certain lengths
and stuff like that. I'm just ssing that's where it
comes from. That cockpit, that bloody cockpit is like like
you know, you just have to fit.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Someone over there to exactly all.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Right, So something, let's talk about this jet. Let's talk
about the history of how we ended up getting it.
So at one point India had round more they're not
at one point. Sorry, in real in the sixty two
years of Make twenty one and being in service, we've
had around eight hun seventy five odd MIKE twenty one
that we have had on service.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
They've either been built.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Majority of them have been built here in India by
the HL more than six fifty of them. The initial
batch was important from Russia across the world. I think
over eleven thousand of these machines have been made. I
think it's probably the most produced supersonic jet in history,
in history industry, and.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
If you count the Chinese variants the F sevens, it
would definitely be the most produced jet in history. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
So I want to talk to you something about when
did India decide to go for the mid twenty one
and how did you end up with a situation And
I don't mean that in a bad way, with the
situation where the mid twenty one was your air force,
right because it was the jet you had in the
(12:00):
most numbers. Was it a plan or was it just that,
you know, some things didn't work out. That thing didn't
work out, that tending work out, So you just kept
getting more of the mixed, just like you had to
keep extending its retirement because the pages did.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Not worker for the last time.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Right, So tell us about this on the what's India?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
You know? So you've just spoken about the numbers of
the mid twenty one, of course, the largest produced jet
in history, post Cold War era, post Second World War
era jet, a second generation fighter jet. You know, so
the Soviets Spiral development mid fifteen mix seventeen nineteen mid
(12:40):
fifteen is it's not supersonic. The seventeen was at seventeen
or the nineteen was supersonic, and then they modified it.
They brought out the Mike twenty one. They started designing
it in the nineteen fifties, early nineteen fifties, and this
aircraft was like a bullet. It was designed like a bullet.
If you see the sweep of the delta wings and
(13:00):
it has a tail, it's a tailed delta design. Very interesting.
It's designed like a bullet which you fire from the ground.
It goes up and knocks out the bomber fleet and
then comes back. That's it. That's the only thing it
was designed for. It is a high speed, high altitude
interceptor that would take off at very high speed mark
(13:21):
more than mark one, go to forty to fifty thousand
feet and hit the American bombers that were supposed to
invade the Soviet heartline. So a lot of the Soviet
philosophy for the Navy, for the Air Force was about
these high speed combatants, literally hundreds of them that you
could mass produce that would swarm the enemy. And this
(13:43):
is don't forget, Dave. You're just about a decade after
the first Second World War where you've seen thousand bomber
raids over Germany. Literally Germany and Japan had been bombed
into submission. The Soviets feared that they would be next,
and that was what the Cold War was all. So
they designed this aircraft to go very high, very fast,
(14:04):
intercept bombers. And the kind of thinking in those days
is what produced aircraft like the Mid twenty one. And
a couple of years later you had this very revolutionary
aircraft called the Mid twenty five, which pushed the envelope
of the Mike twenty one even further. It was going
at three times the speed of sound, right, And that
(14:24):
was that very famous Cold War thing in the nineteen
seventeen seventy two where a Soviet pilot flew with the
Mid twenty five to Hakodat Airport in Japan. The West
literally pulled that aircraft apart because they wanted to study
it was the most enigmatic aircraft at that time. So
the Soviets did all of these things, and the mid
twenty one was part of that. Now you cut to
(14:46):
South Asia where looking at Pakistan, which is moving closer
towards the west, Seattle sento all of those formations gets
an aircraft called the F one zero four star Fighter,
and that is an aircraft that causes consternation dismay in Delhi. Look,
(15:07):
they've got such an advanced fighter yet a super sonic
aircraft that, you know, the star Fighter. We got to
get something of our own. Now we turn to the
West and they said, oh, you can't get the star Fighter. We'll,
you know, give you this, We'll give you that, but
you know, we can't give you that thing. And so obviously,
I mean the idea is to play one country against
the other. You give one country a thing you have,
(15:29):
the other country want that the singing, you give them
something else. So that's how the you know, arms bazaar works.
So India, in its anxiety to counter the Pakistani acquisitions
of the F one zero four, went to the Soviet Union.
And until then the IF was primarily Western origin aircraft, right,
(15:52):
and this is the first aircraft that they turned to
the Soviet Union for. So if you look at the
building today that you're looking at, the Indoor Russian Strategic Partnership.
If you look at the foundation of that building, there'll
be a couple of blocks. There will be a T
nine T fifty five tank made for the army. There
will be Osa class missile boats and Pettia class warships
(16:16):
for the navy, and Foxtrot class submarines for the navy
and for the air force. It is the Mike twenty one,
the mid twenty three, the mid twenty five, and twenty seven.
So these were those platforms that actually laid the foundation
of the India Russia then the Soviet Union Defense Partnership.
The Russians were open to selling us everything whatever we wanted.
They would, you know, offer it to us. You wanted
(16:37):
a bombers, they'd say, take the Tu twenty two, you
want a fighter, take the twenty one, Take that Make
twenty three. It's of course about you know, creating relationships,
building relationships, you know, influencing that country. And of course
we saw that in nineteen seventy one Indo of Soviet
Peace and Friendship Treaty and all of that. But they
(16:59):
were to offer you the equipment of a standard that
other countries were not giving you. So that's where the
mid twenty one came in. And it was a one
off by, right, It was never planned the numbers that
you just gave. It was never planned to have eight hundred,
nine hundred things. Sounds familiar. You see echoes of that today. Right, Yeah,
(17:21):
it's a one time by. It's a small number. It's
going to be this. We're not going to We're going
to build our road and all that, and before you
know it, it's the camel in the tent. Analogy, right,
the camel poxes nose into the tent and before you
know it, the camera is in the tent, the Arab
is out of it. The Arab here being the indigenous
program now, So it was it was all always about
(17:46):
small numbers, and gradually it kind of got built up
to bigger and bigger numbers as the Cold War progressed
from the nineteen sixties to the nineteen seventies to the eighties.
As the Cold War intensified, we saw that our options
kept getting limited. Our indigenous programs weren't taking off because
of the Maruth, that famous fighter engine problem we developed
(18:10):
with the Maruth. The only other country that was going
to sell us, you know, good, good equipment. Western country
was France, so you had the Mirages coming in in
the eighties and all that. But through the sixties and
the seventies, the Soviet Union was the only country that
would sell you top of the line equipment, military hardware.
And once seventy one happened, where we kind of signaled
(18:32):
that we were closer to the Soviet Union, a lot
of our choices got restricted, right, so we had to
fly a swim or sync with the Soviets. So that's
how the Make twenty one kind of fitted in. And
if you look at the numbers right and the cost,
it is a very cheap aircraft. I mean. So there's
(18:53):
a former chief used to joke with me about the BrahMos.
I used to say when I saw ask him with them,
and he said, oh, the bram was such an expensive missile.
It's like sending a MIK twenty one on a one
way mission. You know, it's the cost of a MIK
twenty one. That's what he would say the mid twenty one,
there by implying it's just cheap aircraft. You could mass
produce it in the hundreds and thousands, and when you
(19:14):
produce them to such numbers you actually brought down the costs, right,
And the Soviets never built anything in small quantities. For them,
it was always numbers. Whether it's your AK forty seven
or it's your Osa class missile boat or your Mick
twenty one. They would build them in the tens of thousands, right.
They would get a design, go to Mark one, mass
(19:36):
produce it, then go to Mark two, three, four, five,
and all them. And so we kind of latched onto that,
you know, the slipstream of the mid twenty one, and
we went from the nineteen sixties sixty one when we
contracted the jets. They arrived in about sixty three, just
after the sixty two war. They saw they didn't see
any engagement in sixty five, but seventy one was their
high mark, and then continued and because you didn't have
(19:58):
an indigenous program, you didn't have any other options. The
mirages were there from France, but they were expensive, so
we kind of stuck to the mid twenty one. So
that's the short story. That's how it became sixty percent
of the air force. At one point in the nineties,
it was a Mike twenty one. If until the sukhoys
(20:19):
came in.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yes, right, right, So tell me a bit more about
its operational capabilities because the sad part is a lot
of our viewers and listeners from and including me. By
the way, this generation, the only thing we associate with
Mike twenty one is crashes, because that's the phase we
grew up in, right absolutely. So I'm going to come
(20:40):
to that obviously in a bit, but before I go there,
I just want you to talk about the role it
played during seventy one.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, and drink target as well.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Talk about the fighter jet in terms of its capabilities
in the field of war. What was it able to
do that perhaps other fighter jets were not able to
do well?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
The Mike twenty one actually came into its own during
the Nam War, right right. And that's a clue to
one of the questions that you asked about top gun.
And it was an outstanding machine. When the Americans faced
it in battle, they were astounded the way it would climb,
and it had its issues, but it was very fast aircraft.
(21:17):
It would carry air to air missiles, heat seeking missiles,
it had a cannon, all of those things. So for
the role that it was developed, which was basically a
point defense kind of an aircraft. It was an interceptor aircraft.
It did pretty well in that task, and the Indian
Air Force kind of started pushing the envelope with the
Mike twenty one. They acquired it as an air defense aircraft,
(21:38):
as an interceptor aircraft. They went on to make other
variants of the make twenty one, so they converted into
a fighter bomber, They took other variants of it, they
took it to the BIS being the final version that
the Russians designed it in, and then finally we pushed
it even further. So the aircraft that are being retired
today are the by sizes, which is the final version
(22:00):
of the Russian aircraft as modified upgraded by the Indian
Air Force. So we've exploited it in ways that even
the Russians possibly wouldn't have because they had much They
had a very large air force, They had several options.
The mid twenty one was not their mainstay. It was
one of many aircraft that they had that multiple fighter aircraft.
(22:22):
So we've kind of used it in seventy one. Most
outstanding deployment employment of the mid twenty one there is
that very uh, you know, momentous occasion in the fourteenth
of December. If you read, for those of you've read
Brigadier Sidik Salikh's account of the raid on the government
(22:43):
governor's house in Dhaka, there's a very uh, you know,
stirring chapter in which the governor and his cabinet are
meeting uh and the Indian Army is knocking at the
doors of Taka and suddenly the six mik twenty ones
with hunters in a scot they rush past. They do
a gun run. They destroy half the governor's house and
(23:06):
the entire governor's staff. They panic, The governor ducks, the
Governor Mali, he ducks under a table. He resigns. And
so Brigadier Salik is a great eye for detail, and
he says, nobody was hurt, right, but that impact of
being at the receiving end of a supersonic aircraft's gun
(23:28):
run shattered buildings. And he says that you know, there
was an aquarium, a fish tank with goldfish in it.
And he says that I remember seeing the goldfish over
there falling out of the thing. The aquarium had been shattered,
and those goldfish kind of slowly died. And that is
like a metaphor for the military government of East Pakistan.
(23:48):
Right they and two days later, of course, we saw
the largest surrender post the Second World War. So the
mid twenty one played a very small role in that
they did well. They out the F one zero four
star Fighter. And here's the thing. After the seventy one war,
the Pakistan Air Force were very quietly retired the star
(24:09):
Fighter because of they came up against the MIKE twenty one.
They fell shot number of them were shot down, outgunned, outclassed.
Quietly the star Fighters retired and there was a big
vacuum for several years in the path, which was then
filled in as you know famously by the F sixteen
(24:30):
in the late seventies early eighties. So Cargill is where
you actually saw the MIK twenty one, you know, performing
at the limits of its operational envelope. It's not designed
for high altitude warfare. The Air Force tried to use
it for bombing and strifing and escorting and stuff like that,
(24:52):
but it had issues there. So you had that very
famous case of SCOAD leader A Jahoja's aircraft being hit
by a surface to air missile. He was killed in
very very uh, you know, dubious circumstances by the Pakistanis,
and that tells you what they do, how they treat
(25:14):
you know, are captured. But the Big twenty one had
problems there, so which is why the Air Force kind
of then after Cargil they consciously started moving the bombing
duties to other aircraft. So make twenty one, after Cargil
was primarily an interceptor aircraft, point defense what it was
originally designed for. Because by then you already had a
(25:35):
lot of specialist aircraft, fighter bombers, You had Jaguars, you
had Mirages that could do the bombing thing and do
it far more efficiently than the Mike twenty ones. So
make twenty one it from that Cargil thing. And in
the early two thousands, when all those accidents that you described,
it kind of went back to the original rules that
(25:56):
were designed for. And in twenty nineteen Abinan one he
was flying literally a point defense mission. He was steered
by ground control towards these half aircraft that were coming
in at that so it was an interceptor mission that
he was flying where the Air Force says that he's
shot down one park of sixteen. Of course, the Pakistanis
(26:17):
will not admit to that. But it's a good aircraft.
Look at it day, the sixty two years no aircraft
in Indian service this long. I don't even see the
LCA as you know, serving these numbers, six hundred of them,
six hundred eight hundred, accounting for sixty percent of the
(26:38):
you know, air force. That was something that it is
a very unique time place machine kind of movement. Right,
You're not very sure if that kind of thing can
happen once again. So it's done its thing, It's had
its time and it's kind of moved out. I think
we should, you know, respect it for what it did.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, we definitely should, which is why I want to
talk about this aspect now, especially because both of us
are from the media.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
The term that I've read.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Growing up flying coffin for the Make twenty one, and
very incidentally, by the way, you mentioned the F one
of four in response to which we bought the Make
twenty one. Yeah, that also, by the way, has been
called widow maker, not by the Indian media but by foreign.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Media, but the German media. It was an astounding crash
rate where it was in Germany, and it was an
extremely unreliable aircraft. From the German perspective, and it was called,
as you mentioned, the widow Maker in Germany.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah, but the difference being whatever I read online, is
that when it comes to the F one of four,
there is a very healthy acceptance that there were design
flaws with the fighter jet that actually made the crashes happen.
With the makes and you've covered this field for several decades,
now tell us one what actually was the reason for
(27:56):
the crash is because my understanding would be that when
you operate a fighter jets in such large numbers. And
also something that people don't know I think of much
is that the mid twenty one was actually also a
training fighter jet. So almost every Indian Air Force pilot
who graduated from flying school during that period trained on
(28:16):
the mid twenty one before they either moved to other
fighters or they were elevated to actually flying duties.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Right, So if that's.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Also going to be your training jet, I would imagine
the crash ratio to be a bit higher. So one,
as someone in the media, how do you look back
at the time when the media began to be calling
this the flying coffin? And second, what actually happened with
those crashes?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Right? You know, good question there. Now, the thing is
that in the early two thousands, late nineties, early two thousands,
this is what happened, That you saw a very large
number of mid twenty one crashes. That's a fact because
by then the aircraft was already it was fifty percent
of the Air Force's numbers. And it's just suggests that
(28:59):
the more aircraft that you fly, the more numbers that
you have, it will be that particular type of aircraft
that will crash. And we were losing a lot of
meat twenty ones. But it's not easy to say what
there's no one particular reason for that. It wasn't certainly
a design flaw. I think it was a combination of
several factors. The training aspect that you mentioned is one
(29:21):
of them. It's a very hard to handle aircraft. Whoever
I have spoken to they say that, look, this aircraft
actually taught us a lot about flying. We thought we
were you know, aces and all that, but the military
sat into the cockpit. It had great, you know, handling skills,
but you had to handle it in a certain way
and you had to be very skilled to fly it. Now,
(29:42):
what happened was that we didn't have a jet trainer. Yes,
that was a big, big mistake that we allowed this
gap to open up in the eighties and in the nineties,
the fact that one of the largest air forces in
the world didn't have an advanced jet trainer, so which
means that pilots were going directly from a piston engine
(30:02):
trainer straight away into a fighter jet toropit like a
Mike twenty one, and you were landing. Your landing speeds
were two hundred and fifty three hundred and all that
I mean these are like very high speeds, so a
lot of those crashes happened by the way, when the
aircraft was landing, when it was taking off, those kinds
of things happened. So then also you had the issue
(30:24):
of spare parts. Right after the breakup of the Soviet Union,
there were a number of the mid twenty ones which
we didn't have spares for, so you literally had third
parties selling us spares. That was also an issue, the
fact that your pilots didn't have a good training platform.
They were jumping directly from the turboproper aircraft straightway into
(30:45):
a Mike twenty one trainer and then into a mid
twenty one fighter jet. Combination of factors. That's what led
to the Surgeon accidents. And as many of you remember,
George Fernandez, the Defense Minister, then had to then fly
in a Make twenty one himself to kind of assuage,
you know, people that this aircraft was still safe to fly.
(31:07):
But you know, the interesting thing is that I have
in all of those years, I've written several stories. I've
interviewed the kin of the pilots, some of the very
outstanding pilots that we lost in those crashes, their wives,
their mothers, They were heartbroken and it was really sad
what happened there. I never met any Air Force officer
(31:32):
in any squadron who said this aircraft was unfit to
fly or anything like that. They all had faith in
the machine and its capabilities, because they said, it's as
clear as that if we don't have faith in the machine,
we will not fly it. It was not that the
Air Force had no other option and therefore they were
flying it. That was much later when the fact that
you're flying these machines, which are over three decades old,
(31:55):
you know, well into the twenty twenty fives, points to
a failure of at many levels of planning you're in
an account for the LCA is not coming in the
numbers that they were meant to be. The LC, as
you know, it was meant to replace the Mike twenty
one on a one is to one basis, Right, one
MIK twenty one goes out one LCA. They just flies in.
That didn't happen for various reasons. We didn't have a
(32:18):
plan B. We should clearly have had a plan B.
We didn't. So now it's for us at least in
the short term. In the short term I mean the
next seven, eight, ten years, because any new aircraft that
we contract to buy is not going to come in
the numbers at least for a decade. Right, you have
no option but to go in the lcaight THEES and
(32:39):
I think so, you know, coming back to that question
about those crashes, crashes are there, but if you look
at the overall numbers that they made up sixty to
fifty sixty percent of the air Force, there were many
other MiGs that were crashing as well. Mike twenty three
crashes were there, Twenty sevens also were crashing. The common
thing that oh, MiGs are unsafe, you know, every every
(33:02):
make that crash became a make twenty one. That's how
it was. But you know, I think a lot of
lessons have been learned since then, and of course the
advanced jet trainer came in. Yes, it's been what seventeen
years in service now, seventeen or eighteen years, but these
I mean, I'm saying that not one pilot should have
been lost, and it was really sad what happened. And
(33:25):
I think the Air Force has learned its lessons since then,
and we possibly will never see, you know, that that
kind of rate of accidents because fighter file, you know,
fighter flying itself has changed now, yes, and that was
a dark phase.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, and your take on someone from within the media
when you would remember back then what Peter did with
the label, I think.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
That labeling of that aircraft was unfortunate. We should never
have called it that because I mean, you know, it's
a good headline to give for the moment, you know,
widow maker. We you know, it wasn't even an original one.
It was a it was a cut paste from a
foreign thing. The F one zero four coffin flying coffin
(34:12):
and all of that, and that gave it a bad rap.
And basically it kind of undermined the pilots were flying
that aircraft. You know, can you imagine the kind of
angst I've been that the families would have been going through,
you know, for an Air Force pilot who was posted
in Make twenty one s Gordon and you come out
(34:32):
every day with stories like this to say that, oh,
you know, the Air Force is flying flying coffins and
these are widow makers and you know, so many people
have died, so many pilots had died. But you know,
I think the media should have been a little more
careful in the kind of language that we chose to
(34:54):
put out the kind of stories that we did in
the early two thousands. There was, of course a popular
movie as well. I remember in two thousand and five
was a the Amir Kanfin which actually had a big
twenty one, which spoke of yes, yes, yes, so it
was it Actually it got the popular imagination as well.
So when all of this kind of came in, I
(35:15):
think the Air Force was under a lot of pressure.
And even now, you know that those injuries are still
quite raw, those memories are still very fresh.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Right, we'll talk more about this, but a truck quick break.
Speaker 4 (35:36):
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diabetes management while stopping yourself from eating that chocolate pudding
is good, but is it really enough? This month, Health
Wealth will be doing a special podcast on World Diabetes Day,
which is the fourteenth of November. Tune in and discover
(35:57):
with me what nutrients diabetics should be having and how
to supplement your diet for your long term well being.
You can catch the episode on our website, YouTube, Apple, Spotify,
and other audio streaming platforms.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Welcome back, Sandeep and I have been discussing the Make
twenty one history in the Force and its capabilities and
how we're a period of time sort of started getting
old and reached a point where it had to be retired,
like you would do with any piece of technology, any
piece of equipment. But then there Force had to keep
holding on to it because the replacements, which was the
(36:40):
light combat aircraft, they just never came on. Time still
hasn't by there with the Mark one. At least the
Mark one is in service and two squadrons, but the
Mark one is supposed to still come by the end
of this year the first deliveries. But how old is
the meg Sandeep that is being retired this morning. So
the mid twenty one, like you said before the break,
(37:02):
is this is the Bison version of it. So I
want to talk about from the first one that we began,
this pot this this episode, the second generation fighter that
you said we put it from Russia and response to
Pakistan buying the F one zero force, where have we
come in terms of upgrading and improving the Meg? Is
the cockpit by they were still as cramped as the
one I stats Hatten in the Chandikad Air Force Museum.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Have the ivonis improved? Is it easier to see outside?
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Because one thing I forgot to mention when I was
talking about it, it is just full of dials, man Like,
it's just green and dial. When you're flying that fast,
how the hell does it pilot? No? But anyway, so
how has the MEG evolved the Indian MiG twenty one
to the point that it was able to face off
against advanced Pakistani fighter jets in twenty nineteen post Bala
(37:53):
Code when the dog fight and famous dog fight happened
and you had then being command Rabin and Bartaman shooting
down one Pakistani fighter jet. I'm going to talk about
that controversy also. But before that, yes, the evolution of
the MIKE twenty one.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Well, so the Mike twenty ones that are being retired.
The last two squadns of the IAAF that are being
retired are the Bison standard, which is a modification of
the mid twenty one BIS, which was the last evolution
of the MIC that the Russians had produced. And we
of course had produced the BIS in large numbers for
about two decades at right up to nineteen eighty eight
(38:28):
if I remember correctly, because the production run ended in
nineteen eighty eight, late eighties. So the aircraft that are
being retired now would be about three decades thirty five
years old. Thirty thirty five years old. And I've actually
seen some of these aircraft in Jodhpur during exercise and
they look pretty beat up. You know, they look like
old cars a bit. You know, you can see the
(38:49):
thing the age is showing, right. So the Air Force
has taken the decision to retire it. They've probably done
a cost benefit analysis even at a time it's acceptable
for them to go down to twenty nine scadons. It's
a very brave decision that they've taken to retire from
to go from thirty one to twenty nine. It's a
(39:10):
psychological thing that you're looking at the smallest Indian Air
Force since the nineteen sixty two war with China, right,
that is a big, big thing that they've chosen to
go with, possibly to make their case also for more
fighter aircraft. Of course, there's no doubt that the Air
Force needs more fighter aircraft, you know, whether it comes
(39:32):
from indigenous sources or from imports, or a combination of both,
maybe a third line, a third source as well. So
they're looking at all of these permutations combinations. But yes,
the fighters that are being retired, the last two scadons
thirty thirty five years old. These are the biz which
became the Bison, and the Bison was a very very
(39:53):
good project that the Indian Air Force did in collaboration
with Russia. It was the ninety three. It was called
the ninety three, which I think it had to do
with the a the year in which this upgrade began
in Russia. It took a couple of years. It was
about one twenty five or one twenty six fighter jets complete,
(40:15):
about literally about six squadons worth. The last last batch
of what five six coadrons of bis were upgraded to
the Bison standard and they did pretty well. A lot
of those dials that you saw in the older mix
were replaced by I think it was about three or
four digital displays there. So they had a very good radar,
the phasotroncopio, the Russian radar. It had beyond visual range missiles.
(40:40):
It had some very very significant upgrades that could bring it.
So the Make twenty one is a second generation fighter aircraft.
This one, the Bison became a proper third generation aircraft, right,
which gave some scares to American aircraft also in exercises
because very small cross sections rcs. It would come in
very quickly, it would pick up and you know, shoot
(41:03):
missiles beyond visual range, those kinds of things. So it
had a couple of good, you know, design features. But again,
you know, I was thinking that maybe this is something
that we should have worked on again in the eighties
and it should have continued upgrading it possibly made a
new variant of the mid twenty one as well, locally produced.
That would have been a very interesting second line to
(41:27):
the LCA stages. But of course we're clutching at Strawsier
it's like, you know, what if what if we could
have done this, we could have done that HF twenty four.
So you know, we're looking at twenty twenty five because
the numbers are shrunk. We're looking at this rear view mirror,
and our rearview mirror, unfortunately, is becoming bigger as we
(41:48):
look at the kind of decisions that weren't taken, the
choices that weren't made, which is why we are today
where we are with the numbers that we have. Of course,
the MIK twenty one, they could have used it better
done what the Chinese did as well. You know, the
Chinese of course produced the Make twenty one as the
the F seven. They kept on modernizing it, modifying it,
(42:09):
and you see a lot of the DNA of the
MIKE twenty one and the Sukhoi is in the present
generation of you know, J thirty five fighters, fifth generation
fighters of the Chinese have produced because you know, for them,
it's again we come back to that thing of spiral development.
You know, take a design, keep modernizing and improving it,
(42:30):
Mark one, Mark two, Mark three. You never lose sight
of that that line, you know, you don't get distracted.
You don't go here, there and all, which is what
the Chinese have done and which is ideally what we
should have done as well. But in short, make twenty
one great aircraft seen it's time and the Bison doesn't
(42:50):
look like what the bis and I think what is
the type seventy seven that I think? So one of
the older aircrowd over? Yeah, yeah right.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
So one more point on the twenty nineteen dog fight
where the mid twenty one was able to stand up
to advanced for Pakistani sets, and this is from the
producer Tanya. It's a fantastic question I felt, is that
she wants to know whether the fact that you're going
to be taking off scrambling on a fighter jet that's
pretty old and facing off against the enemy who has
(43:23):
arguably had more advanced fighters than you would that player
of pilot's mind, even though that pilot is very confident
of its fighter jet, because like you've said, the Air
Force and Air Force pilots have never said anything bad
about the jet. They were always very confident about it.
But still, this is a live, almost.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
War like scenario.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
There is a portential of a dogfight. The dock fed
did happen? Two jets were taken down. One was Indian
and one was Pakistani. So does that player a fight
a fighter pilot's mind care.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Well, you know, I don't think a would ever have
had that thought when he took off. When he was
ordered it was it was a ground based he was
underground control and he was asked to intercept this flock
of path jets that came in, and they did. They
dropped some ordnance and they went back and he was
in pursuit. It was that typical dogfight as we understand it.
(44:15):
You know, it was classic. He picked up those jets,
he fired a missile, they fired a missile. They got
him at a longer range because of the am Ram
that he has. And I think the problem there was
that we didn't quite realize they how deadly the am
ram was. We saw that thing, you know, in two
thousand and five, those acquisitions, the large numbers of them,
(44:36):
were bought incidentally by the Pakistan Air Force from the Americans.
I remember laughing about it that, you know, they bought
it as part of the War on Terror kind of
special funds that they got, and it said, the Taliban
don't have fighter jets, so who are they, you know,
using the ambrames against and it's very clearly it was
(44:56):
the Indian Air Force, because you know, the Pakistan Air
Force has no no other mission but to take down
Indian Air Force jets. There is nothing else they want
to do. They don't even want to support the Park Army.
They certainly don't want to take on the Indian Navy.
They only exist to take down the Indian Air Force
fighter jets. It's a it's a kind of a gladiatorial
(45:18):
mindset that they've brought in and to an extent that
you know, today you're looking at several PAF air bases
that have been hold and shattered and all that where
able to fly these jets from, you know, in conflict.
I would be very worried if I were a path chief,
because if in thirty minutes you can push button BrahMos
missiles and you know, destroy your air bases, I'd be
(45:40):
really worried. I my fighter jets aren't made to operate
off highways, and you can do that for a while, right,
not in any large number to cause concern to the
Indian AIRFCE. But you know the thing is that back
to Balacote, he was jammed, His comms were jammed, that's
what we understand. And he was hit by a very
(46:02):
capable American missile and that's what happened. That we didn't
factor in the fact that you could be hit by
an Amram and that's what exactly happened. That maybe this
was one engagement in which the Pakistan Air Force had
an edge because a of numbers and b because of
that one particular system that we didn't take into account, right,
(46:22):
and which is what is actually made up the case
for the Raphael, which is why we went in for
the raphile in the numbers, and which is why the
air force today seems to be very focused on getting
one hundred and fourteen more at very large costs.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
It must be said, because I'm guessing one learning and
guessing from there. Then also is the importance of electronic
warfare block fights, which is what you said happened with
the being jammed. So I think at one point is
what report say that he was not able to hear
the ground control telling him turned back, you are kind
of about to cross the eloc and then that actually
happened and.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
And he went into the other side that you know,
and you know very quick aside. I'll take a minute day.
One of the greatest upgrades in fact of the MIKE
twenty one. I was talked to my Air Force historian
friend a couple of days back by Marshall supermannium you're
telling me the greatest innovation. He called it jugad. It's
not a what I like the force. You know. One
(47:21):
of the greatest upgrades that the Indian Air Force did
on the mid twenty one was the e W version.
They had a dedicated e W squadron I think it
was thirty five or something thirty five squadon which was
upgraded by the Indian Air Force in the late seventies
in collaboration with Dado. And this was a Swedish e
(47:42):
W system. It was a podded e W system called Chatterbox.
Interesting name, so the chatterbox was used in that squadron.
It had I think three tanks for extended ranges and
it had the e W pods and MIKE twenty ones
in the Ler Squadan, so called growler'squadon would escort the
(48:03):
Indian fighter bombers like the Canberras and the the Hunters
and later the Jaguars as well, and they were operating
at the very limits of their envelope. So that was
the most interesting upgrade e W Mike twenty one. And
you know, I believe that we've not paid enough attention
to electronic warfare in the air force. Like the US
(48:25):
Air Force for instance, has dedicated electronic warfare squadents. We
haven't invested in that kind of you know, overarching e
W capabilities for us. It was like something that oh,
you know, you have a Mirage, Mirage will also do
e W. Sukhois will also do e W. That kind
of you know, like a multi roll kind of thing.
To have a dedicated set of e W aircraft that
(48:47):
was something that MIK twenty one did briefly interesting.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
So on the on the post Placod dog fight, the
controversial bid and because I'm never going to get a
chance to a four lepisto on that that one question,
so I'm just going to use this opportunity to.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Ask that tangent.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
And it's something that's going to be like, you know,
your analysis and your feeling of it. The in AFO
says that Abananda was also able to shoot down on
F sixteen of the Pakistani airfos the wise chief if
I'm not wrong, but the three services. Wise chiefs displayed
some parts of the of the debris that they said
beyond to the F sixteen. Pakistan obviously has not acknowledged that.
(49:25):
Initially Pakistan said two pilots, but down then revised that
to one that in famous press conference by Asika fur So,
there is there is quite a lot of evidence that
one Pakistani jet did go down, but the question being
wasn't in F sixteen because that's a big psychological blow
right now. A guest the previous season of In her
Defense had said, putting his neck outs, had said that
(49:46):
he believes it was actually a GF seventeen of the Chinese,
of the Chinese GF seventeen, not actually the F sixteen,
for the simplest reason that Pakistan would not not risk
having the F sixteen so close to Indian fighters. Knows
what actually happened that day. The people who know will
probably never see it for the next few years. They'll
probably see it much later. Your analysis and your theory
(50:08):
on this point.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Well, I think it was one jet did definitely go
down on the Pakistani side, And you know, like you said,
it's not possibly it's not a F sixteen because there
were no Martin bit Baker ejections that day, right, and
certainly not on our sid because the MEEK twenty one
that Abinan then ejected from used a Russian ejection seat,
so there was no ejection on the other side, which
(50:31):
leads one to believe that, yes, possibly it was a
JF seventeen that went down. Something did go down, and
there is a story which says that the pilot was
that pilot had rejected. There was there was some speculation
with the pilot being captured and beaten and killed by
the you know, the Pakistani crowds that captured him, and
you know, all of those stories were there. But the
(50:51):
two pilot theory, based on the parachutes that still stands.
So who knows. The truth will come out. How many
aircraft did Pakistan lose during ob Sindur on the ground
and in the air, on the ground and in the Yeah,
I think that there'd be a lot of you know,
money that should be put on that that those wagers.
(51:13):
It'll take a couple of years, but the truth will emerge.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
I mean, we have more than three months after opresations
through one of the Pakistani airs is still out of commission.
By the way, they keep extending that Noteme saying that
runway is not operational.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
It took Pakistan for ten years to acknowledge the Northern
Light Infantry were there in Cargil fighting. You know, we
got to know only when Pervez Mushaff actually wrote his
autobios where he said, yes, then I was there. Yes,
we lost so many of our soldiers and you know,
and they refuse to take their bodies back because that
would mean acknowledging that they were Pakistani soldiers. But I
how Pakistan's always fought since nineteen forty seven, right, right.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
Right, So the last question on this point on this
topic the legacy of the Make twenty one one. The
personal legacy for you as a reporter who's covered this
for several years. When you will see those images of
the Make twenty one taking off from Tannad Air Force
Base this morning, what's your lasting memory of the Make
twenty one. And second, the legacy for the Air Force
(52:14):
and India in general, because when you have a jet
that's been a majority of your fleet for so long, Yeah,
a jet that's been your third stage fighter trainer, so
your your generations of pilots have grown up and have
trained on this so it obviously affects the character of
(52:35):
Air Force, I would imagine, right, so the legacy that
it leaves on the Air force as well.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
And where do we go from here?
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Right? Good, good question. They've so my first trust with
the Make twenty one child growing up in the seventies,
father was in the forces is the Navy, and he
came back with this beautiful little brochure of the nineteen
seventy one War. It was called the Story of Defense,
produced by the Defense Ministry, and there was one picture
in that of an aircraft and it was the most
(53:03):
amazing photograph I'd ever seen. It was a black and
white photograph of a MIK twenty one in tiger stripe camouflage.
And I later discovered that this was an aircraft that
was deployed on the in Uttarlai, I think it was
on the Western Front in the seventy one War. And
believe it or not, you can see that same aircraft
in the same tiger stripe camouflage paint at the palam
(53:25):
Air Force Museum. I just discovered that. It's incredible. So
that was the first twist. And then of course there
was a naval pilot who had actually flown the Mik
twenty one in the seventies. So I remember my father
introducing me to him. It was Commander McAdden and I said,
you remember that aircraft that you saw in that book,
the MIK twenty one. I said, yes, she's the man
(53:45):
who flew it. So I was like, so that was
my first big Mike twenty one thing. And of course
later in while we were reporting, we saw the Mike
twenty one, but it was closer to the time that
it was exiting, you know, the air and I think
the Air Force. It's left a big imprint on the
Indian Air Force in a way that possibly no other
(54:07):
machine will simply because of the numbers. You know, if
we're going to operate something in the six hundred seven hundred,
eight hundred's sixty percent of air force, it will leave
a certain kind of imprint on the pilots who flight.
And I think it has kind of helped the Indian
Air Force also, if you look at it, segue into
a lot of Russian equipment very easily, so that they're
(54:31):
all the same family. So you know, if you ask
a Mike twenty one pilot who's then gone on. And
I was speaking to m Marshall massan Make twenty one
pilot instructor. He's trained Iraqi pilots as well. He said,
you know, when I he always wanted to fly a
Make twenty one, but he ended up, you know, in
a Hunter's Gordon in the seventy one war. Then he said,
I want to fly a super soning. They put him
(54:52):
in the Sukhoi seven. So, but finally came into the
Mike twenty one, and he is nothing but praise for
the Make twenty one, and he says that, you know,
it is such a demanding machine, but it actually taught
me a lot about flying, you know, so you had
to be a really skilled kind of a pilot to
fly that machine, like the Mike twenty one. So it's
it's in terms of legend, I don't think there's going
(55:16):
to be any aircraft like the Mike twenty one. Ever.
I don't even see the two thirty approaching those standards.
Possibly the Mirage simply because of its longevity. You know,
it's been in service for four decades. It will continue
for another ten, maybe fifteen years more. But the Mike
twenty one imprint is very unique, and you know, it's
(55:38):
it's not just about a machine. It's about a relationship
that you had with the country. It's a lot of geopolitics,
it's you know, heartbreak, a lot of heartbreak. Like we
were talking about this, you know, losing pilots. That's the
worst thing that can happen, you know, losing pilots. And
that's one good thing about Obsindoor. While the Air Force
(56:02):
did acknowledge that it lost machines, not one Indian pilot
was lost. And for me, that's the most important thing.
Machines can come and go right, but for me, it
is the life of an Air Force officer, the pilot
that's the most precious to me. And of course, the
Big twenty one, by virtue of its legacy in the
(56:24):
Indian Air Force, that's going to continue. It is going
to be unmatched. And here's the thing. A couple of
years back, there was a proposal for the Indian Air
Force to gift its last remaining MIKE twenty ones to
the Russian Air Force. Right now, this is the interesting thing.
The Russian Air Force has never operated MIKE twenty one.
(56:47):
It's the Soviet Air Force that operated and retired them.
So here was you know, India kind of giving back
one of its machines. I think it was a plan
for three machines, and it was supposed to be a
big Indo Russian event that planned a simultaneous this thing
and put In. When prison Putin came here, he was
supposed to be gifted that machine. I don't know what
(57:09):
happened now that you know, it's quite possible it might
happen even in twenty twenty five years. He's due to
visit in November or December for a summit level.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
You have thirty six twenty right now, Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
Have a couple you can spare, and I'm sure Russians
would very happily, you know, acknowledge it. But it would
make a very fine gift to give the last few
flight worthy make twenty one Bisons, again upgraded with Russian assistance,
back to the Russian Air Force. I'm sure they appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Gift very much, which I think makes a circle back
to the two point number one of what we began
is that the character of Russian war machines. And once
again on a previous season, one of the guests said
that whenever they were indo US or indo Western Air Force,
(58:03):
the Western pilots always wanted to take a look at
the MC twenty one as close as possible.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
They always were very fascinated by.
Speaker 3 (58:09):
The by the bison and bison yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:11):
Right right.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
So I think we'll ended there and some trivia time,
and before we answer the question we began at the
start of this episode, the biggest trivia question for me
right now, what happens to the thirty six mconium bisons
that we have now well thirty six.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
A lot of them are going to museums. They'd by
gate guardians, and I imagine the Air Force Historic flight
which has a couple of machines. It has the Dakota
which Raji chansa shaker. The politician has gifted them. It's
probably the only time that a politician has gifted anything
(58:48):
back to the military. You know, it's a very commendable gesture.
So you would probably see the MAKE twenty one flying
into the Indian Air Force service in that a few
machines will keep flying and you know, like I mentioned,
quite possible. You never know, we could actually you know,
gift it back to the Russian Federation. So all of
(59:12):
them will be there in some form or the other.
They will be around us. They will always remind us
of the sixty two years of service that the mid
twenty one gave the Indian Air Force and of course.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
India, right, So the questions I asked at the beginning,
and I know the answer. Actually something told them to
me before may Beecandigat and I was quite surprised. So,
which country now is going to be the largest operator
of the make twenty one?
Speaker 3 (59:35):
Surprise? Which western country will be the largest operator of
the mid twenty ones after the Indian Air Force retires them?
Is the United States of America, because there is a
company there, Drunk and International, which is a private company.
Of course, it's not the government, which has about twenty
five MIK twenty ones there. So this is a company
that specializes in renting out aircraft for aggressive training, those
(59:57):
kinds of things. They have a couple of these machines
lying around. They have over one hundred fighter jets. I
was pleasantly surprised to discover that they are over one
hundred aircraft. Twenty five of them are MIKE twenty ones.
So that's a good fun fact there for you. That
the United States, which is like those American pilots who
wanted a closer look at the mid twenty one. It's
(01:00:20):
as close as it gets. They're all there, and I
think it's in Miami, Florida, Donald Trump Country.
Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Yeah, And I think this is the perfect note then
to end the episode is, which also I think kind
of describes the sheer lethality of the mid twenty one
is what and how is it linked to top Con
the actual flight school in the in the US on
which the movie Top This movie.
Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Is based absolutely, And it just has to do with
the Vietnam War where the usfos took a lot of casualties,
a lot of aircraft were you know, knocked out of
the skies, and a lot of them by the mid
twenty ones flown by the Vietnamese pilots the North Vietnam
Is and this outstanding machine knocked out so many phantoms
(01:01:04):
and F one O four's that the USAF and the
US Navy in particular said, my god, we've got to
go back to you know, dog fighting and tactics and
all of that. And that's when they set up that
flight training school in Miramar, Florida nineteen sixty eight, if
I remember correctly, just after the Vietnam War, and that's
(01:01:24):
what Top Gun is. The origin of that, you know,
flying Academy is the experience with the mid twenty one,
and of course other may be you know, jets in
North Vietnam, but primarily the mid twenty because the mid
twenty one was the outstanding star of the North Vietnamese
Air Force and that's when the US got a root shock,
(01:01:44):
and that's how you have Top Gun. And of course
in the movie Top Gun, the first one, there were
mid thirty mid twenty twos of something they were called,
and they were played by American aircraft. You know, I
think they were F five, yeah, if I remember correctly. Yeah,
So the Mik twenty one is there. It's there in
the room, and it's primarily because of the Vietnam War
(01:02:07):
that it's such a big thing. As you mentioned, those
American pilots, all of them have been second generation pilots,
you know who. The legend of the Mike twenty one
is something that's always there in the room, in a
room when you're talking to Air Force pilots. So you know,
US Navy pilots, they all respect the Mike twenty one
for what it did back then.
Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
Yeah, right, And I think the legend of the Make
twenty one will live on even if the aircraft itself
does not anymore in active flying service with the Air Force.
Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Thanks on the fantastic discussion. I loved every bit of it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
As always, Thanks so much, thanks for having me there, and.
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Thanks as always to our lessons than yours. That's it
for this week's Defense Stores For more, tune in next week.
Till then, Stay safe and not cross any boundaries without passport.
Speaker 5 (01:02:56):
KB the Haske marquis Ya jhem or Hard episode Arch
the Radio Apple podcast Spotify Ko audio played form sun
(01:03:25):
Jama
This is India Today Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to season three of In Our Defense, the podcast
that takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
This is in Our Defense.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
This week is going to be a very special episode.
We're going to talk about one of the most iconic
fighter jets ever made in the world, fighter jet that
at one point was the Indian Air Force, the Make
twenty one. We're recording this a couple of days before
the Make twenty one is formally retired in a ceremony
that will be held at the Chandigard Air Force Base.
(00:55):
In fact, I think the episode will come out on
the evening of the ceremony. The ceremon it takes place
on Friday morning, and this episode should be out both
on YouTube and audio by Friday evening. And this gives
me the perfect opportunity to dive deep into the history
of this aircraft that to be fair, when I was
(01:17):
growing up, made some very bad and terrible headlines. I
think the media was to blame for a major part
of it. And I'm in the media, so I can
I can say that with some sort of surety. When
it gave the mid twenty one, I would say, nonsense
labels such as the flying Coffin and stuff like that.
(01:37):
But what makes this aircraft so legendary? Why was it
once the bulk of the Indian Air Force? Why did
the Air Force take so long to retire it? For
this and more, I have with me Sandy.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Goody good to be back.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Excited about the topic and absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Mid twenty one it always takes you back into time,
you know, actually time machine yea.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Literally the Air Force has had it for sixty odd
years now, and we'll talk a lot about this and
the fact that why even at sixty two years of
being in operation, it does not still make it an
old fighter jet that you would think about. But before
we get into all of that, a couple of things
you were talking about before before we begin recording some
(02:21):
deep and I think I want to have that piece
of trivia out for our viewers and listeners. In fact,
we won't have that trivia out right now, but we'll
talk about the question in fact, is that what country
and this is the Western country by the way, is
going to be the largest operator of the Mike twenty
one after the Air Force retires them, as hasitat them
(02:42):
actually by the time.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
As episodes of this morning.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And also what is the connection of the Make twenty
one to Top Gun, not the movie, but the flying school.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
On which the movie was based.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
We'll talk about that towards the end of the episode,
so please stay with us.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
We will be a fascinating episode.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Something I want to start actually by talking about Russian
jets in general, because I think Russian fighter jets just
look damn sexy.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
You know, if I.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Were to compared them to like Western fighters, they seem
to have character. Whether you have the make money one
of the iconic nos, whether you have that hulk of
a sukuoi or you have that I actually found on
during my research, the forty seven that never actually was
in service, but an experimental plane that had forwards weat.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yes, yes, I'm at the pilot.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I'm in the test pilot by the way.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, So do you agree with me that Russian fighter
jets seem to have a very sort of a characteristic design.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
They've not just Russian fighter jets. Every single Russian military
hardware has a warlike look about it, okay, right there,
whether it is the missile boats, whether it's the destroyers,
the tanks, the assault rifles, and of course the fighter jets.
They look like fighter jets. They look like war machines,
you know. And because I'm I'm a Trekkie, I'm a
(04:02):
Star Trek fan. And if you see in Star Trek,
also the coolest ships, the most menacing looking ships up
from the Klingon Federation, right, they have the deadliest looking
birds of prey. And you see a bird of prey
versus a US S enterprise, a very harmless looking kind
of thing, right, But when you see the kling On
(04:23):
bird of prey, it's a menacing aircraft. Similarly, the Russian Federation,
the Soviet Union, their aircraft look really deadly, I mean,
you know. And to cut a long story short, a
couple of years back, I was in Moscow and someone said,
there's a new sou fifty seven on static display. You
want to go and see it? I said, hell, yes,
what are you asking me about? And when I saw
(04:45):
the sou fifty seven. I have to tell you they've
had an out of body experience right when I saw
the aircraft and I compared it to that scene in Firefox.
You know, it's it's that Cold War era movie. I
don't know how many of you've heard about it, Clint
Eastwood film where CLINTE. Eastwood is smuggled into the Soviet
Union and he steals their newest jet, which is the
(05:07):
mid thirty one. I had that same feeling when Clint
Eastwood actually sees that machine for the first time. You know,
it's like a really menacing looking aircraft, and yere, this
S fifty seven was that that airbase. It's one of
the coolest looking aircraft that I've seen. And you know,
if you remember this movie again, I know a lot
of Hollywood, you know, plugging a lot of Hollywood movies.
(05:29):
There was that Hollywood film that was a sequel to
Independence Day where they had these the Americans flying these
new stealth jet inspired by alien technology. They used the
SOO fifty seven for them simply because that jet looked
so menacing, you know, and all the aircraft had that
(05:50):
have that thing around them, whether it's the sou fifty seven,
or it's the Sooth thirty. I remember seeing the South
thirty for the first time. It looked like a klingon
bird of praise, you know exactly the weight, it's like
hunched down, nose drooping and all that. So Russians, you
have to give it to them. The bomber fleet. I mean,
just look at the TU one forty four, look at
(06:10):
the T one sixty. Uh. They all look so menacing
black jack and all very very They're menacing at the
same time, very elegant. You know that. It's a combination
that's very hard to describe. But for all of you,
you know, fighter buffs, I'm sure a lot of you
agree with this. The Russians designed the most lethal looking egg. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
In fact, you know, I'm going to show you a
pictures on the band.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
I'm going to have my producer show it to our
viewers on YouTube and for our people or who listen
to us an audio. We have a link in the show description.
It's an image from the Chundergird Air Force Museum of
the Bamak and Maha saying the first three women fighter
pilots and it's a lovely, lovely love oh yes.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yes, of course.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Then in the front of a twentyway it is.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Possibly one of the best photographs I've seen for Make
twenty one with their pilots and all that. You know,
apart from the fact that it's a very big it's
a red letter day for the Air Force. Three Make
twenty one fighter pilots, very beautifully taken photograph. It's it's
everything that the machine is all about, and you have
this new thing. You know, it's like the Air Force
then the Air Force now now it's like spanning. It's
(07:20):
a generation spanning photograph.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And imotually give you to the to the museum over
there because I think this actually is the best poster
they have over there. And when you look at the
history share history of what the Air Force may have
to display it for people over there, and they've managed
to put this post up there, I literally hatstoff to them.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
It's a fantastic image.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
People should definitely take a look at it, and if
you aren't, undergut would definitely take a look at the
post Into your life speaking of tundygard something before we
actually again go into Make twenty one, they also have
a simulator Make twenty one simulator, so you're talking about
war machines elegance. But I'll tell you something. I sat
in that simulator. That cockpit is damn damn uncomfortable. It
(08:04):
is cramped as hell. There is no place to move
your leg, there is no place, it seems to move
your head.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
How the hell do you fly that thing? Good question, Dave.
You know, the first time I saw a Make twenty one,
that is exactly my question. Where do you fit a
pilot into this? You know? The mid twenty one to
me is nothing but a It's an engine with a
pilot strapped onto it, and it's got two wings, right,
it's just made for brute speed, and it's got a radar,
(08:33):
of course, it's got a radar in the nose, thankfully.
And it's like a pilot's trapped to a very fast
flying machine. That's what it is. That's you know, Russian design,
you know philosophy. For you, they first put all the
weapons and the equipment, and then they fit the people
into it. You know, for them, the mission is so important,
right right, it's and it's you know, whether you look
(08:56):
at your T ninety tanks, T seventy two tanks, they're
all like that, extremely cramped, no room for creature, comforts, nothing,
You can barely stretch your legs. Right, it's the The
operators just just fit into those spaces. And it's strange
because I have friends who are like six feet two
and they rail about, you know, the T seventy two
(09:19):
and T ninety tanks. I said, But you know, my
friend can lovers, I said, Bob said, your install has
been how to help you fit inside? Is a tank? Commander?
Is a commander regiment? How do you fit into this?
It says, Oh, I have to tell you. Here's the
best things to say about Russian equipment. You know, whether
it's seventy to ninety and all, I guess it's it just,
(09:40):
you know, grows on you. And you you know, you
don't expect all these things from Western equipment, but you
two from the the Russian equipment. You expect them to
be hardy. You expect it to be uh you know,
uh takes a beating, Uh takes a licking, continuous slicking,
that kind of thing. So they make the most outstanding
(10:03):
war machines. The electronics might not be as robust, but
when it comes to survivability and all that, it's Russian
and Soviet equipment. Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Once again, I mean if people engine they should definitely
try out this similator because that'll give you a very actual,
real experience of what a cockpit of FOR twenty one
is actually like. And I think also that's perhaps where
because you know, back when I was appearing for my
NBA exam and I went for the SSB, I found
out of the Air Force has very strict measurement requirements
(10:34):
for fighter pilot, for people who want to enter the
fighter's team. Your legs have to be a certain length,
your chest has to be so you your tors a
certain length, your height has to be a certain lengths
and stuff like that. I'm just ssing that's where it
comes from. That cockpit, that bloody cockpit is like like
you know, you just have to fit.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Someone over there to exactly all.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Right, So something, let's talk about this jet. Let's talk
about the history of how we ended up getting it.
So at one point India had round more they're not
at one point. Sorry, in real in the sixty two
years of Make twenty one and being in service, we've
had around eight hun seventy five odd MIKE twenty one
that we have had on service.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
They've either been built.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Majority of them have been built here in India by
the HL more than six fifty of them. The initial
batch was important from Russia across the world. I think
over eleven thousand of these machines have been made. I
think it's probably the most produced supersonic jet in history,
in history industry, and.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
If you count the Chinese variants the F sevens, it
would definitely be the most produced jet in history. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
So I want to talk to you something about when
did India decide to go for the mid twenty one
and how did you end up with a situation And
I don't mean that in a bad way, with the
situation where the mid twenty one was your air force,
right because it was the jet you had in the
(12:00):
most numbers. Was it a plan or was it just that,
you know, some things didn't work out. That thing didn't
work out, that tending work out, So you just kept
getting more of the mixed, just like you had to
keep extending its retirement because the pages did.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Not worker for the last time.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Right, So tell us about this on the what's India?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
You know? So you've just spoken about the numbers of
the mid twenty one, of course, the largest produced jet
in history, post Cold War era, post Second World War
era jet, a second generation fighter jet. You know, so
the Soviets Spiral development mid fifteen mix seventeen nineteen mid
(12:40):
fifteen is it's not supersonic. The seventeen was at seventeen
or the nineteen was supersonic, and then they modified it.
They brought out the Mike twenty one. They started designing
it in the nineteen fifties, early nineteen fifties, and this
aircraft was like a bullet. It was designed like a bullet.
If you see the sweep of the delta wings and
(13:00):
it has a tail, it's a tailed delta design. Very interesting.
It's designed like a bullet which you fire from the ground.
It goes up and knocks out the bomber fleet and
then comes back. That's it. That's the only thing it
was designed for. It is a high speed, high altitude
interceptor that would take off at very high speed mark
(13:21):
more than mark one, go to forty to fifty thousand
feet and hit the American bombers that were supposed to
invade the Soviet heartline. So a lot of the Soviet
philosophy for the Navy, for the Air Force was about
these high speed combatants, literally hundreds of them that you
could mass produce that would swarm the enemy. And this
(13:43):
is don't forget, Dave. You're just about a decade after
the first Second World War where you've seen thousand bomber
raids over Germany. Literally Germany and Japan had been bombed
into submission. The Soviets feared that they would be next,
and that was what the Cold War was all. So
they designed this aircraft to go very high, very fast,
(14:04):
intercept bombers. And the kind of thinking in those days
is what produced aircraft like the Mid twenty one. And
a couple of years later you had this very revolutionary
aircraft called the Mid twenty five, which pushed the envelope
of the Mike twenty one even further. It was going
at three times the speed of sound, right, And that
(14:24):
was that very famous Cold War thing in the nineteen
seventeen seventy two where a Soviet pilot flew with the
Mid twenty five to Hakodat Airport in Japan. The West
literally pulled that aircraft apart because they wanted to study
it was the most enigmatic aircraft at that time. So
the Soviets did all of these things, and the mid
twenty one was part of that. Now you cut to
(14:46):
South Asia where looking at Pakistan, which is moving closer
towards the west, Seattle sento all of those formations gets
an aircraft called the F one zero four star Fighter,
and that is an aircraft that causes consternation dismay in Delhi. Look,
(15:07):
they've got such an advanced fighter yet a super sonic
aircraft that, you know, the star Fighter. We got to
get something of our own. Now we turn to the
West and they said, oh, you can't get the star Fighter. We'll,
you know, give you this, We'll give you that, but
you know, we can't give you that thing. And so obviously,
I mean the idea is to play one country against
the other. You give one country a thing you have,
(15:29):
the other country want that the singing, you give them
something else. So that's how the you know, arms bazaar works.
So India, in its anxiety to counter the Pakistani acquisitions
of the F one zero four, went to the Soviet Union.
And until then the IF was primarily Western origin aircraft, right,
(15:52):
and this is the first aircraft that they turned to
the Soviet Union for. So if you look at the
building today that you're looking at, the Indoor Russian Strategic Partnership.
If you look at the foundation of that building, there'll
be a couple of blocks. There will be a T
nine T fifty five tank made for the army. There
will be Osa class missile boats and Pettia class warships
(16:16):
for the navy, and Foxtrot class submarines for the navy
and for the air force. It is the Mike twenty one,
the mid twenty three, the mid twenty five, and twenty seven.
So these were those platforms that actually laid the foundation
of the India Russia then the Soviet Union Defense Partnership.
The Russians were open to selling us everything whatever we wanted.
They would, you know, offer it to us. You wanted
(16:37):
a bombers, they'd say, take the Tu twenty two, you
want a fighter, take the twenty one, Take that Make
twenty three. It's of course about you know, creating relationships,
building relationships, you know, influencing that country. And of course
we saw that in nineteen seventy one Indo of Soviet
Peace and Friendship Treaty and all of that. But they
(16:59):
were to offer you the equipment of a standard that
other countries were not giving you. So that's where the
mid twenty one came in. And it was a one
off by, right, It was never planned the numbers that
you just gave. It was never planned to have eight hundred,
nine hundred things. Sounds familiar. You see echoes of that today. Right, Yeah,
(17:21):
it's a one time by. It's a small number. It's
going to be this. We're not going to We're going
to build our road and all that, and before you
know it, it's the camel in the tent. Analogy, right,
the camel poxes nose into the tent and before you
know it, the camera is in the tent, the Arab
is out of it. The Arab here being the indigenous
program now, So it was it was all always about
(17:46):
small numbers, and gradually it kind of got built up
to bigger and bigger numbers as the Cold War progressed
from the nineteen sixties to the nineteen seventies to the eighties.
As the Cold War intensified, we saw that our options
kept getting limited. Our indigenous programs weren't taking off because
of the Maruth, that famous fighter engine problem we developed
(18:10):
with the Maruth. The only other country that was going
to sell us, you know, good, good equipment. Western country
was France, so you had the Mirages coming in in
the eighties and all that. But through the sixties and
the seventies, the Soviet Union was the only country that
would sell you top of the line equipment, military hardware.
And once seventy one happened, where we kind of signaled
(18:32):
that we were closer to the Soviet Union, a lot
of our choices got restricted, right, so we had to
fly a swim or sync with the Soviets. So that's
how the Make twenty one kind of fitted in. And
if you look at the numbers right and the cost,
it is a very cheap aircraft. I mean. So there's
(18:53):
a former chief used to joke with me about the BrahMos.
I used to say when I saw ask him with them,
and he said, oh, the bram was such an expensive missile.
It's like sending a MIK twenty one on a one
way mission. You know, it's the cost of a MIK
twenty one. That's what he would say the mid twenty one,
there by implying it's just cheap aircraft. You could mass
produce it in the hundreds and thousands, and when you
(19:14):
produce them to such numbers you actually brought down the costs, right,
And the Soviets never built anything in small quantities. For them,
it was always numbers. Whether it's your AK forty seven
or it's your Osa class missile boat or your Mick
twenty one. They would build them in the tens of thousands, right.
They would get a design, go to Mark one, mass
(19:36):
produce it, then go to Mark two, three, four, five,
and all them. And so we kind of latched onto that,
you know, the slipstream of the mid twenty one, and
we went from the nineteen sixties sixty one when we
contracted the jets. They arrived in about sixty three, just
after the sixty two war. They saw they didn't see
any engagement in sixty five, but seventy one was their
high mark, and then continued and because you didn't have
(19:58):
an indigenous program, you didn't have any other options. The
mirages were there from France, but they were expensive, so
we kind of stuck to the mid twenty one. So
that's the short story. That's how it became sixty percent
of the air force. At one point in the nineties,
it was a Mike twenty one. If until the sukhoys
(20:19):
came in.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yes, right, right, So tell me a bit more about
its operational capabilities because the sad part is a lot
of our viewers and listeners from and including me. By
the way, this generation, the only thing we associate with
Mike twenty one is crashes, because that's the phase we
grew up in, right absolutely. So I'm going to come
(20:40):
to that obviously in a bit, but before I go there,
I just want you to talk about the role it
played during seventy one.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, and drink target as well.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Talk about the fighter jet in terms of its capabilities
in the field of war. What was it able to
do that perhaps other fighter jets were not able to
do well?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
The Mike twenty one actually came into its own during
the Nam War, right right. And that's a clue to
one of the questions that you asked about top gun.
And it was an outstanding machine. When the Americans faced
it in battle, they were astounded the way it would climb,
and it had its issues, but it was very fast aircraft.
(21:17):
It would carry air to air missiles, heat seeking missiles,
it had a cannon, all of those things. So for
the role that it was developed, which was basically a
point defense kind of an aircraft. It was an interceptor aircraft.
It did pretty well in that task, and the Indian
Air Force kind of started pushing the envelope with the
Mike twenty one. They acquired it as an air defense aircraft,
(21:38):
as an interceptor aircraft. They went on to make other
variants of the make twenty one, so they converted into
a fighter bomber, They took other variants of it, they
took it to the BIS being the final version that
the Russians designed it in, and then finally we pushed
it even further. So the aircraft that are being retired
today are the by sizes, which is the final version
(22:00):
of the Russian aircraft as modified upgraded by the Indian
Air Force. So we've exploited it in ways that even
the Russians possibly wouldn't have because they had much They
had a very large air force, They had several options.
The mid twenty one was not their mainstay. It was
one of many aircraft that they had that multiple fighter aircraft.
(22:22):
So we've kind of used it in seventy one. Most
outstanding deployment employment of the mid twenty one there is
that very uh, you know, momentous occasion in the fourteenth
of December. If you read, for those of you've read
Brigadier Sidik Salikh's account of the raid on the government
(22:43):
governor's house in Dhaka, there's a very uh, you know,
stirring chapter in which the governor and his cabinet are
meeting uh and the Indian Army is knocking at the
doors of Taka and suddenly the six mik twenty ones
with hunters in a scot they rush past. They do
a gun run. They destroy half the governor's house and
(23:06):
the entire governor's staff. They panic, The governor ducks, the
Governor Mali, he ducks under a table. He resigns. And
so Brigadier Salik is a great eye for detail, and
he says, nobody was hurt, right, but that impact of
being at the receiving end of a supersonic aircraft's gun
(23:28):
run shattered buildings. And he says that you know, there
was an aquarium, a fish tank with goldfish in it.
And he says that I remember seeing the goldfish over
there falling out of the thing. The aquarium had been shattered,
and those goldfish kind of slowly died. And that is
like a metaphor for the military government of East Pakistan.
(23:48):
Right they and two days later, of course, we saw
the largest surrender post the Second World War. So the
mid twenty one played a very small role in that
they did well. They out the F one zero four
star Fighter. And here's the thing. After the seventy one war,
the Pakistan Air Force were very quietly retired the star
(24:09):
Fighter because of they came up against the MIKE twenty one.
They fell shot number of them were shot down, outgunned, outclassed.
Quietly the star Fighters retired and there was a big
vacuum for several years in the path, which was then
filled in as you know famously by the F sixteen
(24:30):
in the late seventies early eighties. So Cargill is where
you actually saw the MIK twenty one, you know, performing
at the limits of its operational envelope. It's not designed
for high altitude warfare. The Air Force tried to use
it for bombing and strifing and escorting and stuff like that,
(24:52):
but it had issues there. So you had that very
famous case of SCOAD leader A Jahoja's aircraft being hit
by a surface to air missile. He was killed in
very very uh, you know, dubious circumstances by the Pakistanis,
and that tells you what they do, how they treat
(25:14):
you know, are captured. But the Big twenty one had
problems there, so which is why the Air Force kind
of then after Cargil they consciously started moving the bombing
duties to other aircraft. So make twenty one, after Cargil
was primarily an interceptor aircraft, point defense what it was
originally designed for. Because by then you already had a
(25:35):
lot of specialist aircraft, fighter bombers, You had Jaguars, you
had Mirages that could do the bombing thing and do
it far more efficiently than the Mike twenty ones. So
make twenty one it from that Cargil thing. And in
the early two thousands, when all those accidents that you described,
it kind of went back to the original rules that
(25:56):
were designed for. And in twenty nineteen Abinan one he
was flying literally a point defense mission. He was steered
by ground control towards these half aircraft that were coming
in at that so it was an interceptor mission that
he was flying where the Air Force says that he's
shot down one park of sixteen. Of course, the Pakistanis
(26:17):
will not admit to that. But it's a good aircraft.
Look at it day, the sixty two years no aircraft
in Indian service this long. I don't even see the
LCA as you know, serving these numbers, six hundred of them,
six hundred eight hundred, accounting for sixty percent of the
(26:38):
you know, air force. That was something that it is
a very unique time place machine kind of movement. Right,
You're not very sure if that kind of thing can
happen once again. So it's done its thing, It's had
its time and it's kind of moved out. I think
we should, you know, respect it for what it did.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, we definitely should, which is why I want to
talk about this aspect now, especially because both of us
are from the media.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
The term that I've read.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Growing up flying coffin for the Make twenty one, and
very incidentally, by the way, you mentioned the F one
of four in response to which we bought the Make
twenty one. Yeah, that also, by the way, has been
called widow maker, not by the Indian media but by foreign.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Media, but the German media. It was an astounding crash
rate where it was in Germany, and it was an
extremely unreliable aircraft. From the German perspective, and it was called,
as you mentioned, the widow Maker in Germany.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah, but the difference being whatever I read online, is
that when it comes to the F one of four,
there is a very healthy acceptance that there were design
flaws with the fighter jet that actually made the crashes happen.
With the makes and you've covered this field for several decades,
now tell us one what actually was the reason for
(27:56):
the crash is because my understanding would be that when
you operate a fighter jets in such large numbers. And
also something that people don't know I think of much
is that the mid twenty one was actually also a
training fighter jet. So almost every Indian Air Force pilot
who graduated from flying school during that period trained on
(28:16):
the mid twenty one before they either moved to other
fighters or they were elevated to actually flying duties.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Right, So if that's.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Also going to be your training jet, I would imagine
the crash ratio to be a bit higher. So one,
as someone in the media, how do you look back
at the time when the media began to be calling
this the flying coffin? And second, what actually happened with
those crashes?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Right? You know, good question there. Now, the thing is
that in the early two thousands, late nineties, early two thousands,
this is what happened, That you saw a very large
number of mid twenty one crashes. That's a fact because
by then the aircraft was already it was fifty percent
of the Air Force's numbers. And it's just suggests that
(28:59):
the more aircraft that you fly, the more numbers that
you have, it will be that particular type of aircraft
that will crash. And we were losing a lot of
meat twenty ones. But it's not easy to say what
there's no one particular reason for that. It wasn't certainly
a design flaw. I think it was a combination of
several factors. The training aspect that you mentioned is one
(29:21):
of them. It's a very hard to handle aircraft. Whoever
I have spoken to they say that, look, this aircraft
actually taught us a lot about flying. We thought we
were you know, aces and all that, but the military
sat into the cockpit. It had great, you know, handling skills,
but you had to handle it in a certain way
and you had to be very skilled to fly it. Now,
(29:42):
what happened was that we didn't have a jet trainer. Yes,
that was a big, big mistake that we allowed this
gap to open up in the eighties and in the nineties,
the fact that one of the largest air forces in
the world didn't have an advanced jet trainer, so which
means that pilots were going directly from a piston engine
(30:02):
trainer straight away into a fighter jet toropit like a
Mike twenty one, and you were landing. Your landing speeds
were two hundred and fifty three hundred and all that
I mean these are like very high speeds, so a
lot of those crashes happened by the way, when the
aircraft was landing, when it was taking off, those kinds
of things happened. So then also you had the issue
(30:24):
of spare parts. Right after the breakup of the Soviet Union,
there were a number of the mid twenty ones which
we didn't have spares for, so you literally had third
parties selling us spares. That was also an issue, the
fact that your pilots didn't have a good training platform.
They were jumping directly from the turboproper aircraft straightway into
(30:45):
a Mike twenty one trainer and then into a mid
twenty one fighter jet. Combination of factors. That's what led
to the Surgeon accidents. And as many of you remember,
George Fernandez, the Defense Minister, then had to then fly
in a Make twenty one himself to kind of assuage,
you know, people that this aircraft was still safe to fly.
(31:07):
But you know, the interesting thing is that I have
in all of those years, I've written several stories. I've
interviewed the kin of the pilots, some of the very
outstanding pilots that we lost in those crashes, their wives,
their mothers, They were heartbroken and it was really sad
what happened there. I never met any Air Force officer
(31:32):
in any squadron who said this aircraft was unfit to
fly or anything like that. They all had faith in
the machine and its capabilities, because they said, it's as
clear as that if we don't have faith in the machine,
we will not fly it. It was not that the
Air Force had no other option and therefore they were
flying it. That was much later when the fact that
you're flying these machines, which are over three decades old,
(31:55):
you know, well into the twenty twenty fives, points to
a failure of at many levels of planning you're in
an account for the LCA is not coming in the
numbers that they were meant to be. The LC, as
you know, it was meant to replace the Mike twenty
one on a one is to one basis, Right, one
MIK twenty one goes out one LCA. They just flies in.
That didn't happen for various reasons. We didn't have a
(32:18):
plan B. We should clearly have had a plan B.
We didn't. So now it's for us at least in
the short term. In the short term I mean the
next seven, eight, ten years, because any new aircraft that
we contract to buy is not going to come in
the numbers at least for a decade. Right, you have
no option but to go in the lcaight THEES and
(32:39):
I think so, you know, coming back to that question
about those crashes, crashes are there, but if you look
at the overall numbers that they made up sixty to
fifty sixty percent of the air Force, there were many
other MiGs that were crashing as well. Mike twenty three
crashes were there, Twenty sevens also were crashing. The common
thing that oh, MiGs are unsafe, you know, every every
(33:02):
make that crash became a make twenty one. That's how
it was. But you know, I think a lot of
lessons have been learned since then, and of course the
advanced jet trainer came in. Yes, it's been what seventeen
years in service now, seventeen or eighteen years, but these
I mean, I'm saying that not one pilot should have
been lost, and it was really sad what happened. And
(33:25):
I think the Air Force has learned its lessons since then,
and we possibly will never see, you know, that that
kind of rate of accidents because fighter file, you know,
fighter flying itself has changed now, yes, and that was
a dark phase.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, and your take on someone from within the media
when you would remember back then what Peter did with
the label, I think.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
That labeling of that aircraft was unfortunate. We should never
have called it that because I mean, you know, it's
a good headline to give for the moment, you know,
widow maker. We you know, it wasn't even an original one.
It was a it was a cut paste from a
foreign thing. The F one zero four coffin flying coffin
(34:12):
and all of that, and that gave it a bad rap.
And basically it kind of undermined the pilots were flying
that aircraft. You know, can you imagine the kind of
angst I've been that the families would have been going through,
you know, for an Air Force pilot who was posted
in Make twenty one s Gordon and you come out
(34:32):
every day with stories like this to say that, oh,
you know, the Air Force is flying flying coffins and
these are widow makers and you know, so many people
have died, so many pilots had died. But you know,
I think the media should have been a little more
careful in the kind of language that we chose to
(34:54):
put out the kind of stories that we did in
the early two thousands. There was, of course a popular
movie as well. I remember in two thousand and five
was a the Amir Kanfin which actually had a big
twenty one, which spoke of yes, yes, yes, so it
was it Actually it got the popular imagination as well.
So when all of this kind of came in, I
(35:15):
think the Air Force was under a lot of pressure.
And even now, you know that those injuries are still
quite raw, those memories are still very fresh.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Right, we'll talk more about this, but a truck quick break.
Speaker 4 (35:36):
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diabetes management while stopping yourself from eating that chocolate pudding
is good, but is it really enough? This month, Health
Wealth will be doing a special podcast on World Diabetes Day,
which is the fourteenth of November. Tune in and discover
(35:57):
with me what nutrients diabetics should be having and how
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and other audio streaming platforms.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Welcome back, Sandeep and I have been discussing the Make
twenty one history in the Force and its capabilities and
how we're a period of time sort of started getting
old and reached a point where it had to be retired,
like you would do with any piece of technology, any
piece of equipment. But then there Force had to keep
holding on to it because the replacements, which was the
(36:40):
light combat aircraft, they just never came on. Time still
hasn't by there with the Mark one. At least the
Mark one is in service and two squadrons, but the
Mark one is supposed to still come by the end
of this year the first deliveries. But how old is
the meg Sandeep that is being retired this morning. So
the mid twenty one, like you said before the break,
(37:02):
is this is the Bison version of it. So I
want to talk about from the first one that we began,
this pot this this episode, the second generation fighter that
you said we put it from Russia and response to
Pakistan buying the F one zero force, where have we
come in terms of upgrading and improving the Meg? Is
the cockpit by they were still as cramped as the
one I stats Hatten in the Chandikad Air Force Museum.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Have the ivonis improved? Is it easier to see outside?
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Because one thing I forgot to mention when I was
talking about it, it is just full of dials, man Like,
it's just green and dial. When you're flying that fast,
how the hell does it pilot? No? But anyway, so
how has the MEG evolved the Indian MiG twenty one
to the point that it was able to face off
against advanced Pakistani fighter jets in twenty nineteen post Bala
(37:53):
Code when the dog fight and famous dog fight happened
and you had then being command Rabin and Bartaman shooting
down one Pakistani fighter jet. I'm going to talk about
that controversy also. But before that, yes, the evolution of
the MIKE twenty one.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Well, so the Mike twenty ones that are being retired.
The last two squadns of the IAAF that are being
retired are the Bison standard, which is a modification of
the mid twenty one BIS, which was the last evolution
of the MIC that the Russians had produced. And we
of course had produced the BIS in large numbers for
about two decades at right up to nineteen eighty eight
(38:28):
if I remember correctly, because the production run ended in
nineteen eighty eight, late eighties. So the aircraft that are
being retired now would be about three decades thirty five
years old. Thirty thirty five years old. And I've actually
seen some of these aircraft in Jodhpur during exercise and
they look pretty beat up. You know, they look like
old cars a bit. You know, you can see the
(38:49):
thing the age is showing, right. So the Air Force
has taken the decision to retire it. They've probably done
a cost benefit analysis even at a time it's acceptable
for them to go down to twenty nine scadons. It's
a very brave decision that they've taken to retire from
to go from thirty one to twenty nine. It's a
(39:10):
psychological thing that you're looking at the smallest Indian Air
Force since the nineteen sixty two war with China, right,
that is a big, big thing that they've chosen to
go with, possibly to make their case also for more
fighter aircraft. Of course, there's no doubt that the Air
Force needs more fighter aircraft, you know, whether it comes
(39:32):
from indigenous sources or from imports, or a combination of both,
maybe a third line, a third source as well. So
they're looking at all of these permutations combinations. But yes,
the fighters that are being retired, the last two scadons
thirty thirty five years old. These are the biz which
became the Bison, and the Bison was a very very
(39:53):
good project that the Indian Air Force did in collaboration
with Russia. It was the ninety three. It was called
the ninety three, which I think it had to do
with the a the year in which this upgrade began
in Russia. It took a couple of years. It was
about one twenty five or one twenty six fighter jets complete,
(40:15):
about literally about six squadons worth. The last last batch
of what five six coadrons of bis were upgraded to
the Bison standard and they did pretty well. A lot
of those dials that you saw in the older mix
were replaced by I think it was about three or
four digital displays there. So they had a very good radar,
the phasotroncopio, the Russian radar. It had beyond visual range missiles.
(40:40):
It had some very very significant upgrades that could bring it.
So the Make twenty one is a second generation fighter aircraft.
This one, the Bison became a proper third generation aircraft, right,
which gave some scares to American aircraft also in exercises
because very small cross sections rcs. It would come in
very quickly, it would pick up and you know, shoot
(41:03):
missiles beyond visual range, those kinds of things. So it
had a couple of good, you know, design features. But again,
you know, I was thinking that maybe this is something
that we should have worked on again in the eighties
and it should have continued upgrading it possibly made a
new variant of the mid twenty one as well, locally produced.
That would have been a very interesting second line to
(41:27):
the LCA stages. But of course we're clutching at Strawsier
it's like, you know, what if what if we could
have done this, we could have done that HF twenty four.
So you know, we're looking at twenty twenty five because
the numbers are shrunk. We're looking at this rear view mirror,
and our rearview mirror, unfortunately, is becoming bigger as we
(41:48):
look at the kind of decisions that weren't taken, the
choices that weren't made, which is why we are today
where we are with the numbers that we have. Of course,
the MIK twenty one, they could have used it better
done what the Chinese did as well. You know, the
Chinese of course produced the Make twenty one as the
the F seven. They kept on modernizing it, modifying it,
(42:09):
and you see a lot of the DNA of the
MIKE twenty one and the Sukhoi is in the present
generation of you know, J thirty five fighters, fifth generation
fighters of the Chinese have produced because you know, for them,
it's again we come back to that thing of spiral development.
You know, take a design, keep modernizing and improving it,
(42:30):
Mark one, Mark two, Mark three. You never lose sight
of that that line, you know, you don't get distracted.
You don't go here, there and all, which is what
the Chinese have done and which is ideally what we
should have done as well. But in short, make twenty
one great aircraft seen it's time and the Bison doesn't
(42:50):
look like what the bis and I think what is
the type seventy seven that I think? So one of
the older aircrowd over? Yeah, yeah right.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
So one more point on the twenty nineteen dog fight
where the mid twenty one was able to stand up
to advanced for Pakistani sets, and this is from the
producer Tanya. It's a fantastic question I felt, is that
she wants to know whether the fact that you're going
to be taking off scrambling on a fighter jet that's
pretty old and facing off against the enemy who has
(43:23):
arguably had more advanced fighters than you would that player
of pilot's mind, even though that pilot is very confident
of its fighter jet, because like you've said, the Air
Force and Air Force pilots have never said anything bad
about the jet. They were always very confident about it.
But still, this is a live, almost.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
War like scenario.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
There is a portential of a dogfight. The dock fed
did happen? Two jets were taken down. One was Indian
and one was Pakistani. So does that player a fight
a fighter pilot's mind care.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Well, you know, I don't think a would ever have
had that thought when he took off. When he was
ordered it was it was a ground based he was
underground control and he was asked to intercept this flock
of path jets that came in, and they did. They
dropped some ordnance and they went back and he was
in pursuit. It was that typical dogfight as we understand it.
(44:15):
You know, it was classic. He picked up those jets,
he fired a missile, they fired a missile. They got
him at a longer range because of the am Ram
that he has. And I think the problem there was
that we didn't quite realize they how deadly the am
ram was. We saw that thing, you know, in two
thousand and five, those acquisitions, the large numbers of them,
(44:36):
were bought incidentally by the Pakistan Air Force from the Americans.
I remember laughing about it that, you know, they bought
it as part of the War on Terror kind of
special funds that they got, and it said, the Taliban
don't have fighter jets, so who are they, you know,
using the ambrames against and it's very clearly it was
(44:56):
the Indian Air Force, because you know, the Pakistan Air
Force has no no other mission but to take down
Indian Air Force jets. There is nothing else they want
to do. They don't even want to support the Park Army.
They certainly don't want to take on the Indian Navy.
They only exist to take down the Indian Air Force
fighter jets. It's a it's a kind of a gladiatorial
(45:18):
mindset that they've brought in and to an extent that
you know, today you're looking at several PAF air bases
that have been hold and shattered and all that where
able to fly these jets from, you know, in conflict.
I would be very worried if I were a path chief,
because if in thirty minutes you can push button BrahMos
missiles and you know, destroy your air bases, I'd be
(45:40):
really worried. I my fighter jets aren't made to operate
off highways, and you can do that for a while, right,
not in any large number to cause concern to the
Indian AIRFCE. But you know the thing is that back
to Balacote, he was jammed, His comms were jammed, that's
what we understand. And he was hit by a very
(46:02):
capable American missile and that's what happened. That we didn't
factor in the fact that you could be hit by
an Amram and that's what exactly happened. That maybe this
was one engagement in which the Pakistan Air Force had
an edge because a of numbers and b because of
that one particular system that we didn't take into account, right,
(46:22):
and which is what is actually made up the case
for the Raphael, which is why we went in for
the raphile in the numbers, and which is why the
air force today seems to be very focused on getting
one hundred and fourteen more at very large costs.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
It must be said, because I'm guessing one learning and
guessing from there. Then also is the importance of electronic
warfare block fights, which is what you said happened with
the being jammed. So I think at one point is
what report say that he was not able to hear
the ground control telling him turned back, you are kind
of about to cross the eloc and then that actually
happened and.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
And he went into the other side that you know,
and you know very quick aside. I'll take a minute day.
One of the greatest upgrades in fact of the MIKE
twenty one. I was talked to my Air Force historian
friend a couple of days back by Marshall supermannium you're
telling me the greatest innovation. He called it jugad. It's
not a what I like the force. You know. One
(47:21):
of the greatest upgrades that the Indian Air Force did
on the mid twenty one was the e W version.
They had a dedicated e W squadron I think it
was thirty five or something thirty five squadon which was
upgraded by the Indian Air Force in the late seventies
in collaboration with Dado. And this was a Swedish e
(47:42):
W system. It was a podded e W system called Chatterbox.
Interesting name, so the chatterbox was used in that squadron.
It had I think three tanks for extended ranges and
it had the e W pods and MIKE twenty ones
in the Ler Squadan, so called growler'squadon would escort the
(48:03):
Indian fighter bombers like the Canberras and the the Hunters
and later the Jaguars as well, and they were operating
at the very limits of their envelope. So that was
the most interesting upgrade e W Mike twenty one. And
you know, I believe that we've not paid enough attention
to electronic warfare in the air force. Like the US
(48:25):
Air Force for instance, has dedicated electronic warfare squadents. We
haven't invested in that kind of you know, overarching e
W capabilities for us. It was like something that oh,
you know, you have a Mirage, Mirage will also do
e W. Sukhois will also do e W. That kind
of you know, like a multi roll kind of thing.
To have a dedicated set of e W aircraft that
(48:47):
was something that MIK twenty one did briefly interesting.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
So on the on the post Placod dog fight, the
controversial bid and because I'm never going to get a
chance to a four lepisto on that that one question,
so I'm just going to use this opportunity to.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Ask that tangent.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
And it's something that's going to be like, you know,
your analysis and your feeling of it. The in AFO
says that Abananda was also able to shoot down on
F sixteen of the Pakistani airfos the wise chief if
I'm not wrong, but the three services. Wise chiefs displayed
some parts of the of the debris that they said
beyond to the F sixteen. Pakistan obviously has not acknowledged that.
(49:25):
Initially Pakistan said two pilots, but down then revised that
to one that in famous press conference by Asika fur So,
there is there is quite a lot of evidence that
one Pakistani jet did go down, but the question being
wasn't in F sixteen because that's a big psychological blow
right now. A guest the previous season of In her
Defense had said, putting his neck outs, had said that
(49:46):
he believes it was actually a GF seventeen of the Chinese,
of the Chinese GF seventeen, not actually the F sixteen,
for the simplest reason that Pakistan would not not risk
having the F sixteen so close to Indian fighters. Knows
what actually happened that day. The people who know will
probably never see it for the next few years. They'll
probably see it much later. Your analysis and your theory
(50:08):
on this point.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Well, I think it was one jet did definitely go
down on the Pakistani side, And you know, like you said,
it's not possibly it's not a F sixteen because there
were no Martin bit Baker ejections that day, right, and
certainly not on our sid because the MEEK twenty one
that Abinan then ejected from used a Russian ejection seat,
so there was no ejection on the other side, which
(50:31):
leads one to believe that, yes, possibly it was a
JF seventeen that went down. Something did go down, and
there is a story which says that the pilot was
that pilot had rejected. There was there was some speculation
with the pilot being captured and beaten and killed by
the you know, the Pakistani crowds that captured him, and
you know, all of those stories were there. But the
(50:51):
two pilot theory, based on the parachutes that still stands.
So who knows. The truth will come out. How many
aircraft did Pakistan lose during ob Sindur on the ground
and in the air, on the ground and in the Yeah,
I think that there'd be a lot of you know,
money that should be put on that that those wagers.
(51:13):
It'll take a couple of years, but the truth will emerge.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
I mean, we have more than three months after opresations
through one of the Pakistani airs is still out of commission.
By the way, they keep extending that Noteme saying that
runway is not operational.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
It took Pakistan for ten years to acknowledge the Northern
Light Infantry were there in Cargil fighting. You know, we
got to know only when Pervez Mushaff actually wrote his
autobios where he said, yes, then I was there. Yes,
we lost so many of our soldiers and you know,
and they refuse to take their bodies back because that
would mean acknowledging that they were Pakistani soldiers. But I
how Pakistan's always fought since nineteen forty seven, right, right.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
Right, So the last question on this point on this
topic the legacy of the Make twenty one one. The
personal legacy for you as a reporter who's covered this
for several years. When you will see those images of
the Make twenty one taking off from Tannad Air Force
Base this morning, what's your lasting memory of the Make
twenty one. And second, the legacy for the Air Force
(52:14):
and India in general, because when you have a jet
that's been a majority of your fleet for so long, Yeah,
a jet that's been your third stage fighter trainer, so
your your generations of pilots have grown up and have
trained on this so it obviously affects the character of
(52:35):
Air Force, I would imagine, right, so the legacy that
it leaves on the Air force as well.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
And where do we go from here?
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Right? Good, good question. They've so my first trust with
the Make twenty one child growing up in the seventies,
father was in the forces is the Navy, and he
came back with this beautiful little brochure of the nineteen
seventy one War. It was called the Story of Defense,
produced by the Defense Ministry, and there was one picture
in that of an aircraft and it was the most
(53:03):
amazing photograph I'd ever seen. It was a black and
white photograph of a MIK twenty one in tiger stripe camouflage.
And I later discovered that this was an aircraft that
was deployed on the in Uttarlai, I think it was
on the Western Front in the seventy one War. And
believe it or not, you can see that same aircraft
in the same tiger stripe camouflage paint at the palam
(53:25):
Air Force Museum. I just discovered that. It's incredible. So
that was the first twist. And then of course there
was a naval pilot who had actually flown the Mik
twenty one in the seventies. So I remember my father
introducing me to him. It was Commander McAdden and I said,
you remember that aircraft that you saw in that book,
the MIK twenty one. I said, yes, she's the man
(53:45):
who flew it. So I was like, so that was
my first big Mike twenty one thing. And of course
later in while we were reporting, we saw the Mike
twenty one, but it was closer to the time that
it was exiting, you know, the air and I think
the Air Force. It's left a big imprint on the
Indian Air Force in a way that possibly no other
(54:07):
machine will simply because of the numbers. You know, if
we're going to operate something in the six hundred seven hundred,
eight hundred's sixty percent of air force, it will leave
a certain kind of imprint on the pilots who flight.
And I think it has kind of helped the Indian
Air Force also, if you look at it, segue into
a lot of Russian equipment very easily, so that they're
(54:31):
all the same family. So you know, if you ask
a Mike twenty one pilot who's then gone on. And
I was speaking to m Marshall massan Make twenty one
pilot instructor. He's trained Iraqi pilots as well. He said,
you know, when I he always wanted to fly a
Make twenty one, but he ended up, you know, in
a Hunter's Gordon in the seventy one war. Then he said,
I want to fly a super soning. They put him
(54:52):
in the Sukhoi seven. So, but finally came into the
Mike twenty one, and he is nothing but praise for
the Make twenty one, and he says that, you know,
it is such a demanding machine, but it actually taught
me a lot about flying, you know, so you had
to be a really skilled kind of a pilot to
fly that machine, like the Mike twenty one. So it's
it's in terms of legend, I don't think there's going
(55:16):
to be any aircraft like the Mike twenty one. Ever.
I don't even see the two thirty approaching those standards.
Possibly the Mirage simply because of its longevity. You know,
it's been in service for four decades. It will continue
for another ten, maybe fifteen years more. But the Mike
twenty one imprint is very unique, and you know, it's
(55:38):
it's not just about a machine. It's about a relationship
that you had with the country. It's a lot of geopolitics,
it's you know, heartbreak, a lot of heartbreak. Like we
were talking about this, you know, losing pilots. That's the
worst thing that can happen, you know, losing pilots. And
that's one good thing about Obsindoor. While the Air Force
(56:02):
did acknowledge that it lost machines, not one Indian pilot
was lost. And for me, that's the most important thing.
Machines can come and go right, but for me, it
is the life of an Air Force officer, the pilot
that's the most precious to me. And of course, the
Big twenty one, by virtue of its legacy in the
(56:24):
Indian Air Force, that's going to continue. It is going
to be unmatched. And here's the thing. A couple of
years back, there was a proposal for the Indian Air
Force to gift its last remaining MIKE twenty ones to
the Russian Air Force. Right now, this is the interesting thing.
The Russian Air Force has never operated MIKE twenty one.
(56:47):
It's the Soviet Air Force that operated and retired them.
So here was you know, India kind of giving back
one of its machines. I think it was a plan
for three machines, and it was supposed to be a
big Indo Russian event that planned a simultaneous this thing
and put In. When prison Putin came here, he was
supposed to be gifted that machine. I don't know what
(57:09):
happened now that you know, it's quite possible it might
happen even in twenty twenty five years. He's due to
visit in November or December for a summit level.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
You have thirty six twenty right now, Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
Have a couple you can spare, and I'm sure Russians
would very happily, you know, acknowledge it. But it would
make a very fine gift to give the last few
flight worthy make twenty one Bisons, again upgraded with Russian assistance,
back to the Russian Air Force. I'm sure they appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Gift very much, which I think makes a circle back
to the two point number one of what we began
is that the character of Russian war machines. And once
again on a previous season, one of the guests said
that whenever they were indo US or indo Western Air Force,
(58:03):
the Western pilots always wanted to take a look at
the MC twenty one as close as possible.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
They always were very fascinated by.
Speaker 3 (58:09):
The by the bison and bison yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:11):
Right right.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
So I think we'll ended there and some trivia time,
and before we answer the question we began at the
start of this episode, the biggest trivia question for me
right now, what happens to the thirty six mconium bisons
that we have now well thirty six.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
A lot of them are going to museums. They'd by
gate guardians, and I imagine the Air Force Historic flight
which has a couple of machines. It has the Dakota
which Raji chansa shaker. The politician has gifted them. It's
probably the only time that a politician has gifted anything
(58:48):
back to the military. You know, it's a very commendable gesture.
So you would probably see the MAKE twenty one flying
into the Indian Air Force service in that a few
machines will keep flying and you know, like I mentioned,
quite possible. You never know, we could actually you know,
gift it back to the Russian Federation. So all of
(59:12):
them will be there in some form or the other.
They will be around us. They will always remind us
of the sixty two years of service that the mid
twenty one gave the Indian Air Force and of course.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
India, right, So the questions I asked at the beginning,
and I know the answer. Actually something told them to
me before may Beecandigat and I was quite surprised. So,
which country now is going to be the largest operator
of the make twenty one?
Speaker 3 (59:35):
Surprise? Which western country will be the largest operator of
the mid twenty ones after the Indian Air Force retires them?
Is the United States of America, because there is a
company there, Drunk and International, which is a private company.
Of course, it's not the government, which has about twenty
five MIK twenty ones there. So this is a company
that specializes in renting out aircraft for aggressive training, those
(59:57):
kinds of things. They have a couple of these machines
lying around. They have over one hundred fighter jets. I
was pleasantly surprised to discover that they are over one
hundred aircraft. Twenty five of them are MIKE twenty ones.
So that's a good fun fact there for you. That
the United States, which is like those American pilots who
wanted a closer look at the mid twenty one. It's
(01:00:20):
as close as it gets. They're all there, and I
think it's in Miami, Florida, Donald Trump Country.
Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Yeah, And I think this is the perfect note then
to end the episode is, which also I think kind
of describes the sheer lethality of the mid twenty one
is what and how is it linked to top Con
the actual flight school in the in the US on
which the movie Top This movie.
Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Is based absolutely, And it just has to do with
the Vietnam War where the usfos took a lot of casualties,
a lot of aircraft were you know, knocked out of
the skies, and a lot of them by the mid
twenty ones flown by the Vietnamese pilots the North Vietnam
Is and this outstanding machine knocked out so many phantoms
(01:01:04):
and F one O four's that the USAF and the
US Navy in particular said, my god, we've got to
go back to you know, dog fighting and tactics and
all of that. And that's when they set up that
flight training school in Miramar, Florida nineteen sixty eight, if
I remember correctly, just after the Vietnam War, and that's
(01:01:24):
what Top Gun is. The origin of that, you know,
flying Academy is the experience with the mid twenty one,
and of course other may be you know, jets in
North Vietnam, but primarily the mid twenty because the mid
twenty one was the outstanding star of the North Vietnamese
Air Force and that's when the US got a root shock,
(01:01:44):
and that's how you have Top Gun. And of course
in the movie Top Gun, the first one, there were
mid thirty mid twenty twos of something they were called,
and they were played by American aircraft. You know, I
think they were F five, yeah, if I remember correctly. Yeah,
So the Mik twenty one is there. It's there in
the room, and it's primarily because of the Vietnam War
(01:02:07):
that it's such a big thing. As you mentioned, those
American pilots, all of them have been second generation pilots,
you know who. The legend of the Mike twenty one
is something that's always there in the room, in a
room when you're talking to Air Force pilots. So you know,
US Navy pilots, they all respect the Mike twenty one
for what it did back then.
Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
Yeah, right, And I think the legend of the Make
twenty one will live on even if the aircraft itself
does not anymore in active flying service with the Air Force.
Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Thanks on the fantastic discussion. I loved every bit of it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
As always, Thanks so much, thanks for having me there, and.
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Thanks as always to our lessons than yours. That's it
for this week's Defense Stores For more, tune in next week.
Till then, Stay safe and not cross any boundaries without passport.
Speaker 5 (01:02:56):
KB the Haske marquis Ya jhem or Hard episode Arch
the Radio Apple podcast Spotify Ko audio played form sun
(01:03:25):
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