Defence ministry to resolve IAF-HAL fight over trainer aircraft for rookie pilots

NEW DELHI: Upset with the huge delay in development of an indigenous basic trainer aircraft (BTA), the IAF has now formally asked the defence ministry to approve its acquisition case for 37 more Swiss Pilatus PC-7 to add to the 75 such planes already ordered for Rs 2,896 crore last year.
Defence PSU, Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), however, is up in arms over this proposal. The indigenous aircraft manufacturer holds its under-development BTA, called HTT-40, will prove to be cheaper than the Swiss aircraft in the long run.
But IAF is not convinced about HAL delivering the aircraft either in time or in a cost- effective manner. "As per our calculations, each HTT-40 will be costlier than the Pilatus by Rs 2 crore-Rs 5 crore," said an IAF source.
The force, in fact, wants HAL to "junk" its HTT-40 programme and instead "fully concentrate" on the development of the Sitara intermediate jet trainer (IJT), which has already been in the making for over a decade but is nowhere near becoming operational.
Amid the ongoing bitter tussle, which the MoD will eventually have to resolve, the fate of rookie pilots being taught the intricacies of combat flying hangs in balance. Faced with a huge shortage in trainer aircraft, IAF has for long projected a requirement of 181 BTA, 85 IJTs and 106 advanced jet trainers (AJTs) for Stage-I, II and III training.
The question of advanced training is already settled with India progressively inducting 123 British Hawk AJTs contracted in an overall project worth Rs 16,000 crore.
IAF went in for Pilatus after its training schedules went for a toss after the entire fleet of the 114 ageing piston-engine HPT-32 aircraft, that long served as the BTA, was grounded in August 2009 after a crash killed the pilot.
The equally obsolete 80 Kiran Mark-II aircraft are being used for both Stage-I and Stage-II training. "We will stretch Kiran for Stage-II training till 2014-2015. HAL should get the IJT ready by then. Otherwise, we will be forced to send some batches abroad for intermediate training," said the source.
IAF hopes to begin its first course on the Pilatus trainers in July, by when it would have received 14 of them. The force wants to ramp up the training for each fighter pilot to 254 hours, with the first 65 on Pilatus, 82 on IJTs and 107 on Hawks. Over 39% of the 1,010 crashes recorded by IAF since 1970, after all, have been attributed to "human error (aircrew)", which is often the result of inadequate training. "Technical defects", caused by ageing machines and shoddy maintenance, is the other equally big killer.