Hard Landing

Atul Chandra

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is once again faced with a shortfall in its requirements for a Basic Trainer Aircraft (BTA), less than a decade after the situation was thought to be resolved with the induction of the Swiss made Pilatus PC-7 MKII BTA.

DG (Acquisition) MoD V.L. Kantha Rao handing over the RFP documents for 70 HTT-40 basic trainers to

CMD HAL R. Madhavan in the presence of deputy chief of air staff Air Marshal Sandip Singh at Aero India 2021

The inability of the IAF to resolve its basic training requirements, the bedrock on which its future pilots and leaders are trained must be considered as a major failure for the service. It now appears that there will be no early resolution for the IAF’s Stage-I, Stage-II and Stage-III requirements at least till the end of this decade. This is especially the case considering that globally there is a dramatic shift in pilot training. With increased use of simulation for flight training, it becomes increasingly difficult to dovetail these technologies and training systems across a disparate fleet of training aircraft.

Bumpy Ride

The IAF’s present PC-7MKIIs was procured following the unprecedented grounding in 2009 of the entire fleet of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) built Hindustan Piston Trainer 32 (HPT-32) ‘Deepak’ following a series of fatal accidents. At the time of its induction in 2013, the PC-7 MKII revolutionised the IAF’s training infrastructure with introduction of modern full-mission and fixed-base simulators, Ground Mission Debriefing Systems (GMDS), etc. Allegations of impropriety in the Pilatus PC-7 MKII contract led to the cancellation of the option for 38 additional aircraft and the IAF is now left with only 75 of the type.

The PC-7 MKII fleet will be replaced over the longer term by HAL’s indigenously developed Hindustan Turbo Trainer 40 (HTT-40), but it will be available in signif