WHEN the Mirage 2000 was inducted into the Indian Air Force (IAF) in 1984, watching wistfully was Air Marshal Denzil Keelor, then chief of the air base that remains the home to this French-designed multi-role aircraft.
"Oh, that was another time altogether," he remarked when I reminded him of his exploits in the tiny British-built Gnats. He had downed the much-superior American Sabres in dogfights during the war with Pakistan in 1965.
Even the Mirage seems like history. Last week, IAF inducted its first air-borne early warning system (Awacs), mounted on an Ilyushin-76. However, this Russian-built giant of a transporter is also on its way out.
In a US$1.06 billion (RM3.7 billion) defence deal with the United States, India is to acquire six C-130J Super Hercules. Tenders have also been floated for 22 combat and 15 heavy lift helicopters with US, European and Russian manufacturers.
IAF is modernising in a big way. It is possible to get zapped with its flying machines, their technical details, combating skills and their nationalities. But it would help if one followed Arjan Singh, the IAF's pole star who has seen and done it all in close combat in his heyday, and is now the benign old patriarch.
Arjan is India's only living pre-independence IAF marshal, as two soldiers with a hoary past, Field Marshals K.M. Cariappa and Sam Manekshaw, are no more.
Arjan recently turned 91. The most fitting tribute to him has come in the form of The Icon, an in-depth biography penned by retired air commodore Jasjit Singh.
This is the story of one man who has, literally and figuratively, been the IAF's icon for decades. But it is also the history of IAF, both the fighting force and the family.
Arjan joined this family in his teens when World War 2 started. He was 24 when he commanded the No 1 Squadron in 1944, which flew the Hurricane fighters in defence of Imphal, the easternmost Indian city bordering Myanmar.
For his outstanding performance in helping to hold the Japanese at bay, Lord Mountbatten, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces' Southeast Asian Command, personally awarded Arjan the Distinguished Flying Cross, in an unprecedented gesture, right on the battlefield.
It has not been a smooth flight for the IAF. The army got precedence and preference, and the navy long remained the "silent service".
During the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, when the army took the drubbing, the IAF was denied an air combat role in the belief that this would be escalatory and provoke Chinese retaliation by interdicting Indian air supply and bombing Kolkatta and other eastern cities.
In the panic and confusion then, the option of air interdiction of Chinese supply lines in Tibet was simply not considered.
For IAF and Arjan, the testing time came in September 1965, when the subcontinent was plunged into war. Pakistan launched its Operation Grand Slam, in which an armoured thrust targeted the vital town of Akhnur. Arjan was summoned to the defence minister's office with a request for air support. He replied: "In an hour."
And the IAF struck back at the Pakistani offensive within the hour.
The IAF was in action over Chhamb, too, within 30 minutes, and by last light had flown as many as 26 sorties. Pakistan's armoured column and massed infantry suffered considerable attrition and its offensive was blunted.
Though mistakes were made and planning could have been better, in all fairness it must be said that the credit for thwarting Ayub Khan's grandiose plan to capture Kashmir is shared by the Indian army and the IAF -- and Arjan Singh.
Despite enormous difficulties, shortages and internal challenges, the IAF clearly dominated the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), stopping the armoured offensive in its tracks while providing nearly all the required direct air support to the army.
Both India and Pakistan claimed overall victory in 1965. India had not allowed access to the foreign media, which Pakistan did and secured great advantage. India was to correct this mistake in the 1971 Bangladesh War.
Pakistan claimed it won the air war in 1965. Now, speaking through Arjan, the IAF rebuts this with facts and figures to show that the IAF outperformed the PAF in vital parameters of air warfare.
The "Icon" unambiguously debunks the myths of Pakistani superiority, promoted by their propaganda and India's own negligence of history and empirical evidence. And it does so on the basis of hard facts, a large number of them brought to light for the first time.
The IAF shot down three Pakistani fighters for the loss of one of their own, besides providing full support to the army. Besides the Gnat (which came to be called "Sabre Killer"), Hunters and Mysteres also shot down a large number of PAF Sabres and Starfighters in air combat.
The IAF went further ahead in 1971, totally dominating the South Asian sky. It bombed not only tank formations on the ground, but also destroyed the Karachi and Chittagong harbours. Its precision rocketing of the arch at the governor's residence in Dhaka signalled the end of the war.
Noted analyst B.G. Verghese has emphasised the political leadership's failure to recognise the full combat and interdiction role of the IAF. It is also the failure of higher defence management.
Have the lessons been learnt from past mistakes? Yes and no, Verghese observes. A beginning has been made with integrated defence planning, but joint defence management is still debated by Indian defence planners with no common ground.
No matter who won or lost in earlier wars, the ground reality on the sea and in the sky in South Asia remains unchanged. India and Pakistan came close to a war just seven months ago, after the Mumbai terror attacks. The IAF readied its MiG-29s and the PAF deployed 400 aircraft, fearing that India would take a punitive action. Fortunately, India did not. But that does not change the threat perceptions.
A dynamic warrior-leader, Arjan has truly earned his marshal's baton. Y.B. Chavan, defence minister during the 1965 war, recorded: "When he is asked to go ahead on a new task, he even walks as a dancing bird. A real fighting Sikh. And yet how soft and gentle."
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Monday/Columns/2576420/Article/index_html
