New Delhi: Two Indian Air Force fighter jets have crashed after an apparent midair collision while on exercises about 300km (185 miles) south of the capital, New Delhi.
Both aircraft had taken off on January 28, 2023 morning from the Gwalior airbase, about 50km (30 miles) east of where they came down.
“We have located the wreckage of one of the planes and found an injured pilot in the Pahadgarh forests,” officer Dharmender Gaur told AFP news agency.
This is not first time such air crash incident happened. In October 2022, five army soldiers were killed in a chopper crash in Arunachal Pradesh state, near the country’s militarized and disputed border with China.
Sequel to said chopper crash in October 2022 a Cheetah helicopter came down near the town of Tawang, killing its pilot. In December 2021, India’s Chief of defense staff, General Bipin Rawat with his among 13 people were killed when his Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter hit a hillside and burst into flames in Tamil Nadu state.
On 9 March 2022, a BrahMos missile originating from Sirsa, Haryana (India) crashed into Mian Channu, Pakistan. Indian authorities termed it an error and apologized. IAF Wing Commader Abhinandan Varthaman was shot down by PAF in Azad Jammu and Kashmir in February 2019 and was sent back with bleeding nose.
Professional competence of PAF badly exposed IAF incompetence. On the same day IAF shot down its own chopper mistaking it for a Pakistani chopper. As per one estimate at least 152 IAF pilots and 534 aircraft have been lost to accidents and crashed over the past 30 years or so (ref URL http://theprint.in/defence/iaf-lost-152-pilots-534-aircraft-in-crashes-in-past-30-years/1061936/ Accessed on 29 January 2023).
With more than 76.5 $ billion defense budget – estimated to be the third largest in the world only behind the United States and China with 773 $ billion; India has worst accidents record. There is no escape from the fact that mid-air collisions occur due to professional incompetence of pilots. IAF is suffering from poor training and professional lustre. And IAF jets are just ‘flying coffins’.
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