“I believe what this demonstrates is that the capacity exists out there for any nation with the appropriate resources and the will to acquire technology and to train their aircrews to be very, very capable,” said Col. Russ Handy, commander of the 3rd Operations Group. “In the long term this could occur in nations outside of the Indian Air Force.”
The surprising sophistication of Indian fighter aircraft and skill of Indian pilots demonstrated at the Cope India air combat exercise Feb. 15 through 27 at Gwalior Air Force Station, India, should provide a reality check for those who had assumed unquestioned U.S. air superiority
Hampton Stephens
“The (Indian) pilots are as aggressive as our pilots. They are excellent aviators; they work very hard at mission planning; they try to get as much out of a mission or sortie as possible, just like us,” he said. “From one fighter pilot to another, there’s really not that much difference in how we prepare for a mission and what we want to get out of it.”
Col. Greg Neubeck
"very proficient in [their] aircraft and smart on tactics. That combination was tough for us to overcome,"
"The adversaries are better than we thought," Col. Mike Snodgrass added.” And in the case of the Indian Air Force both their training and some of their equipment was better than we anticipated."
“What we’ve seen in the last two weeks is the IAF can stand toe-to-toe with best AF in the world.”
“I pity the pilot who has to face the IAF and chances the day to underestimate him; because he won’t be going home.”
“The greatest compliment we heard from an IAF pilot – You American pilots are just like us, simply down to earth people.”
The Boresight
The outcome of the exercise boils down to [the fact that] they ran tactics that were more advanced than we expected, Snowden says. India had developed its own air tactics somewhat in a vacuum. They had done some training with the French that we knew about, but we did not expect them to be a very well-trained air force.
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"The Indian Air Force is a world-class air force with great aircraft, great pilots, and great leadership," said Capt. Marcus Wilson, an Aggressor pilot at Nellis and the team chief for the exercise.
404: Code One Magazine
Indian pilots have created their own combat techniques and proved to be very smart, flexible and adaptive. This was also not an expected fact because Western tactical experts used to stay on their vision of dealing with Russian style pilots with rigid tactics and no independent moves what so ever. All this matters combined points out the Indian fighters to a real considerable threat leaving the Western analysts and USAF Command thinking it over how credible their own weapons are.
http://www.dutchaviationsupport.com/Articles/IL-78 MIDAS&Crousaders.pdf
Indian AF Su-30K during the Cope India exercise. The Flanker's soundly defeated US Air Force F-15Cs during this exercise, exploiting not only superior BVR radar/missile capabilities, but also the TKS-2 datalink, used to network flights of Flankers
Sukhoi T-50/I-21/Article 701 PAK-FA and Su-27/30/33/35/37 Flanker
"We came rolling in, like, 'Beep-beep, superpower coming through,'" Colonel Fornof told me. "And we had our eyes opened. We learned a lot. By the third week, we were facing a threat that we weren't prepared to face, because we had underestimated them. They had figured out how to take Russian-built equipment and improve upon it."
Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden
Infamous YouTube star Fornof re-appears in pro-F-22 article - The DEW Line
Indian planners combined the use of top-line fighters like this Su-30 with older types and impressive, innovative tactics.
Credit: USAF TSGT. KEITH BROWN
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"When we saw that they were a more professional air force, we realized that within the constraints of the exercise we were going to have a very difficult time," Snowden (A USAF senior pilot at cope india)says. "In general, it looked like they ran a broad spectrum of tactics and they were adaptive. They would analyze what we were doing and then try something else. They weren't afraid to bring the strikers in high or low. They would move them around so that we could never anticipate from day to day what we were going to see."