From Sunday till Wednesday, commanders of the Indian Air Force (IAF) will meet behind closed doors during the biennial IAF commanders’ meet at Vayu Bhavan in the national capital and discuss issues ranging from the strategic, operational, and tactical besides the usual human resources, training and the ‘wherewithal’ logistics facing the force.
An important item of the agenda will be the lessons learnt from ‘Exercise Gagan Shakti’ that took place from April 1 to 10.
Unprecedented in scale and size, ‘Gagan Shakti’ was IAF’s biggest-ever exercise till date to evaluate its war-fighting tactics and techniques in coordination with the Indian Army and Navy with IAF fighter planes and helicopters taking off from different parts of the country to engage ‘pseudo targets’ at Pokhran.
It saw the participation of about 10,000 airmen who were mostly moved to locations by the Army.
The joint exercise with the Army and the Navy was of immense significance in the backdrop of the ‘theaterisation’, ‘integration’, and the ‘jointness’ effort of the Indian military which has been termed a “historic” move by military strategists.
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In effect, the effort proposes to do away with the age-old process of the Indian Army, IAF, and the Navy operating in silos. But what is of interest is that ‘Gagan Shakti’ envisaged the Indian military strategy in a two-front war scenario and therefore included logistics involving the western and northern fronts—the former facing Pakistan and the latter facing China.
The IAF is facing a critical shortage of fighter aircraft with the extant 31 squadrons or about 200 aircraft short of the 42 squadron benchmark—a challenge of considerable proportions due to laggardly production of the indigenous Tejas LCA and long gestation period for new procurement from aboard.
THE WEEK had earlier reported that the IAF may revise the 42 fighter aircraft squadrons benchmark as a basic requirement to fight a two-front war as it was felt to be a number just too short.
READ MORE: IAF’s 42 fighter squadron benchmark may be revised in view of a two-front war
The fighter fleet comprises 12 Sukhoi-30 squadrons, six Jaguar squadrons, three squadrons of Mirage 2000s, MiG 29s and MiG 21s each, and two each squadrons of Rafales and LCA Tejas.
The IAF operates less than 1,700 aircraft including fighters, transport aircraft, trainers, special mission platforms, tankers and helicopters, with around 1.5 lakh active personnel and is mandated to operate in an air space spanning more than 40,000,000 cubic km.
There are seven IAF commands—Western Command (Delhi), Central Air Command (Prayagraj), South Western Air Command (Gandhinagar), Southern Command (Thiruvananthapuram), Eastern Command (Shillong), Training Command (Bengaluru), and the Maintenance Command (Nagpur).