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| India-Pakistan |
| India loses 52 MiGs in three years |
| 2003-07-23 |
| A total of 52 MiG Indian Air Force aircraft have crashed over the past three years, Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes said. Geez, I knew they had a bad record, but not this bad. Twenty-four of the accidents were caused by human error, 20 were due to technical defects and bird-hits were responsible for three, he said. "Human error" also includes a lot of "we don’t know what happened, so let’s blame the pilot. He’s dead and can’t complain." "A continuous and multi-faceted effort is always afoot in (the) Indian Air Force to enhance and upgrade flight safety," Fernandes said in a written reply to a question in the upper house of parliament. A majority of the accidents involved the MiG-21 fighter aircraft. In the most recent accident, a pilot and co-pilot of a MiG-21 died after their plane crashed at a military airport in Indian Kashmir on July 15. The Indian Air Force, the world’s fourth largest, has been plagued by accidents that have left about 100 pilots dead since the early 1990s. A meeting chaired by Fernandes in November decided to phase out the ageing Russian-made MiG-21s. About damm time. Want to buy some F-16s? |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #15 All the Indians I know are decent, highly-motivated entrepeneurs. Being decent, highly-motivated entrepreneurs and simultaneously unhappy with the US are not mutually exclusive characteristics. There's no shortage of Muslims who fit that category - where else do CAIR and other extremist Muslim lobbying groups get their funding? And these are not penny-ante dollars we're talking about, either. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-7-23 5:49:14 PM |
| #14 I do know the Indians are designing and building an indigenous fighter plane; they were going to buy the engine from the US, but when Clinton started an arms embargo after their nuclear tests, they had to start developing their own from scratch. This has set them back a fair bit. |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2003-7-23 5:42:29 PM |
| #13 All the Indians I know are decent, highly-motivated entrepeneurs. 'Course, they're also naturalized US citizens. Come to think of it, that could explain a lot. If India exported all of its Reagan Republicans to the US, what's left behind? |
| Posted by: Mike 2003-7-23 5:37:26 PM |
| #12 They must have classes in school on it. Actually, the uniformity of the crap I hear from Indians indicates that this is what they get from their history books and/or mass media. They're all reading from the same playbook. Our history books tend to accentuate the positive aspects of just about any country chronicled. Their history books probably talk about the glory that was India before those pesky British imperialists upset the apple cart. Not quite as bad as the Chinese with their Alice-in-Wonderland historical accounts, revanchist sentiments and the use of words to obscure rather than illuminate, but not exactly objective either. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-7-23 5:22:29 PM |
| #11 I can echo Zhang Fei's description of Indian resentment toward Americans - it's a rabid case of an inferiority complex. Saudi Arabia, and especially Aramco, employs many thousands of Indians. Toward the Saudis, they are total toadys. Toward Americans, they are 2-faced opportunists with a very big grudge. I learned the hard way that it is a mistake to treat an Indian as your peer. The instant he perceives this, he propmotes himself to be your moral superior and begins harranging you with what's wrong with America. He's never been there, but he knows more about it than you and can tick off a litany of imagined grievances. They must have classes in school on it. As for the totally BS myth of the great Indian programmers, I'll leave that pile of shit for another day. What a load. |
| Posted by: PD 2003-7-23 5:11:24 PM |
| #10 as you all should know other than the eastern block countries and myself ..India is the only country that supported the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan...by the way on a lighter note one of my dad's ex- neighbors...was in Afghan in 1979 December and on christmass day i979 actually saw live the soviet invasion...he was in Afghan on a photography excursion...he said he was sitting in a cafe when suddenly the streets was filled with russian tanks...and suddenly all the soldiers got out of their tanks and went to buy coffee and cigarettes from nearby shops..(the soldiers were all in their teens(vietnam dejavu)).the Afghans in the street were like what in the helllll.....but the jihad had not began yet..ambivalence was widespread...but ofcourse days after that the KHADs(afghan KGB) Tracked him down and ran him outta town |
| Posted by: stevey robinson 2003-7-23 4:27:07 PM |
| #9 Democracy or not, India's complex about America may be too deep-seated for us to get significant benefits from a closer relationship. India was/is a member of the Nonaligned Movement. Wouldn't be surprised if they are still thinking along that line, even though the old Soviet Union is no more. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-7-23 2:48:44 PM |
| #8 Indian antipathy to the US during the cold war seems an almost inevitable result of the era's geopolitics. This is complete BS. During the Cold War, we had many strong relationships with mutually antagonistic countries in Asia and around the world - (1) South Korea and Japan, (2) Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, (3) much of Latin America with their eternally contentious border disputes. None of them turned to the Soviet Union. (Cuba and Nicaragua did, but those were an armed Communist revolutions to which we were inalterably opposed, courtesy of Monroe doctrine). The US never rejects the hand of friendship. Scratch an Indian and you will find a reservoir of resentment at the West for allegedly inflicting upon India its backwardness and poverty. It's stored up resentment similar to the feelings Arabs harbor towards the West, without the murderous instincts. And this is why the Indians can't really be described as allies - they'll accept our assistance, but criticize any requests from us for help as demeaning to them. Hence their rejection of the US request for troops in Iraq. The Indians may speak English, but they're basically dark-skinned versions of the French. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-7-23 2:34:09 PM |
| #7 BTW, doesnt India pay for its own weapons? Hasnt there main request lately simply been for the US to ALLOW Israel to sell weapons systems (like the Arrow) to India? That's the whole point - because of massive American funding and technology-sharing with Israel, getting permission to buy weapons from Israel is a privilege, not a right. The Chinese would dearly love to be able to buy early warning equipment from Israel. Defense rightly put the kibosh on that. Given the doubtful status of our relationship with India, I doubt it is wise to allow our weapons systems to be purchased by India.* * Liberals have this misinformed view that because we sell the most weaponry (by dollar value) in the world, we will sell our full range of weaponry to all and sundry. The truth, of course, is that we sell complicated and expensive weapons systems to those of our friends who can afford them. And we don't sell everything in the inventory. We don't sell cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, submarines or aircraft carriers, and we certainly don't sell WMD. The reason we're tops in the rankings is because we sell the big ticket stuff, whereas the Russians and the Chinese are stuck selling AK-47s, RPGs and SAMs to terrorist front companies. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-7-23 2:20:32 PM |
| #6 well i think Indias position is a bit more complex then that. During the run-up to partition, the indian national congress saw Britain as supportive of the muslim league and then as responsible for partition. They adopted an anti-Brit and anti-western point of view - while britain allied with Pakistan (as well as Iran and then monarchist Iraq) in the Baghdad Pact - which the US supported, and which became CENTO after the first coup in Iraq. This was more or less an extension of the great game - UK/US against Russia, with pro-russian Afghanistan(under the old monarchy) opposed from the other side of the Khyber by pro-Western (and still secularist at that time) Pakistan. India naturally jumped to the anti-Western and thus pro-Soviet side - which also helped it in its attempt to lead a 3rd world block. Nonetheless, IIRC, India's leaning towards the Soviets was still limited, till they fought the Chinese in 1962. The USSR must have seemed a closer, more likely help than Viet Nam absorbed US at that point. These trends reinforced each other, as under Nixon, the US reached out to China (now Pakistans principle ally) , and leaned toward Pakistan in the 1971 Indo-Pak war. Indian antipathy to the US during the cold war seems an almost inevitable result of the era's geopolitics. The geopolitics of today is far different, and so India is not a natural adversary as then. Whether it is a natural ally is less clear. If you see the world as US vs Islamism, or US vs China, or US vs Islamism AND China, then India looks like a natural ally (as, indeed, does Russia). If you see it as all great powers versus American hegemony, then India, like Russia, is a natural adversary. India, with a different view of China then Russia, seems less inclined to oppose US power than Russia is, but is still not the kind of partner that UK or other "coalition of the willing" states are. BTW, doesnt India pay for its own weapons? Hasnt there main request lately simply been for the US to ALLOW Israel to sell weapons systems (like the Arrow) to India? |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-7-23 1:41:00 PM |
| #5 Remember, they're on our side... Actually, they're on their side. They'll milk us for help on the Kashmir issue and on weapons acquisitions while providing no actual assistance. There is a reason why we were allied with Pakistan for much of the Cold War. India was that rare bird - a Soviet fellow traveler that did not need to be told to toe the line - India helped the Soviets because it wanted to*. Democracy or not, India's complex about America may be too deep-seated for us to get significant benefits from a closer relationship. I suspect the nature of these ties is that we will give, and India will take. * The Soviet Union's Eastern European satellites had their leaders appointed by the Kremlin and millions of troops stationed on their territory to act as enforcers - a role they played in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. India helped the Soviets because it wanted to stick it to Uncle Sam. Period. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-7-23 12:41:25 PM |
| #4 That's the problem when you collect used MiGs from all over the world. If the Indians cracked down on corruption perhaps they would have the cash to buy decent material. God knows they have the natural resources to sell... |
| Posted by: Rafael 2003-7-23 12:35:13 PM |
| #3 way to make friends wills. Remember, they're on our side... |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-7-23 12:28:44 PM |
| #2 I agree with Chuck, these guys can't take care of a slurpee machine let alone fighter planes. |
| Posted by: wills 2003-7-23 12:11:31 PM |
| #1 There are some fine firms, based in the United States, that specialize in aircraft maintenance. Perhaps India should look in to it. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-7-23 11:57:12 AM |