The Tortuous MiG-21 Upgrade Saga - Vayu Aerospace

Mediterranean Sea, the visibility improvedconsiderably. Colonel Ibrahim said hewould send a chase aircraft when I flewsolo and I agreed because the triangularcross country way points were small townsin the delta and it would have been easyto miss them in the haze. In all I flew foursorties (tail nos 8354 and 8324) to assessnavigation performance and did dummydives over the airfield to prepare for theweapon delivery sorties. Unfortunatelythe EAF got cold feet at this stage anddid not authorise me for weapon deliverysaying that the Wadi Natrun range in thedesert west of Cairo was“not available”. One ortwo sorties of weapondelivery would not haveenabled me to collect anystatistically significantdata and EAF statisticswould have had to beused in any assessment.In my view the lack oflive firing did not affectthe evaluation.After having flown theinertial nav/attack systemin the Darin Jaguars, Ithought this system onoffer was primitive. It mayhave been state of the artsome years earlier but itwas clearly out of date. Idid, however, find flying the MiG-21 witha HUD a pleasure and the video recorderdebriefing tool of immense value. AirHeadQuarters now gave up its search fora nav/attack system for the time being.The Need forComprehensive UpgradeWhen AOC, AF Station Gorakhpur in1989, I was sent on a short course onSystems Analyses at Metcalfe Housein old Delhi. I found this course veryinformative and useful because it taughtone how to develop quantitative criteriato aid decision making. In 1991 when Iwas Commandant ASTE I was asked byAir HeadQuarters to carry out a study onoperational effectiveness between Sovietoriginand Western aircraft. Amongstother things this study clearly brought outthe need to upgrade as many systems inan aircraft as possible if its effectivenesswas to be improved. To meaningfullyupgrade the MiG-21 fleet, a number ofimprovements had to be made in onego particularly pertaining to its primarysensor, the AI radar, and then navigation,weapons, weapon aiming systems plusairframe life extension which was requiredfor reasonable exploitation of the upgradedfleet.The Soviet Union had passed intohistory at the end of 1991 and now theRussian Federation offered an upgradepackage for the MiG-21bis fleet in 1992.At about the same time, India establisheddiplomatic relations with Israel and defenceties with that country started to develop at aDuring MiG-21 Upgrade talks in Moscow, December 1993 : at the Mikoyan Design Bureau.In front of bust of Artem Mikoyan, famed founder of the MiG Design Bureau are (left to right)Flt. Lt. Chatterjee,, unknown, Wg.Cdr. Sethi, Gp. Capt.H. Masand, RA Beliakov, Head of DesignBureau, Air Cmde P.Rajkumar, Manucharov Rawal, Dy GM, HAL, Nasik.rapid pace. Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI)offered an upgrade of the MiG-21, whichthey had developed for the RomanianAir Force. In May 1993 I was sent to TelAviv to evaluate this proposal. The firsttopic I raised with the IAI engineers wasabout airframe life extension. When askedwhether they had the structural data ofthe MiG-21bis airframe to carry out thelife extension they replied in the negativeand said they expected the IAF to providesuch data. I then flew a sortie in a Lavi testbed aircraft to evaluate the Elta 2032 radarwhich was being offered for the upgrade.Unfortunately the radar failed after only10 minutes of flight and I was not able toevaluate it. When I submitted my reportto Air HeadQuarters stating these twoimportant factors, the Israeli proposal wasrejected.In July 1993 I was posted to AirHeadQuarters as Director Air StaffRequirements and the MiG-21 fleetupgrade problem dropped into my lap. TheMikoyan design bureau had offered a veryattractive upgrade package at reasonablecost. The package consisted of a new radarcalled the Kopyo, Beyond Visual Range(BVR) missile carrying capability, latestClose Combat Missiles, an Inertial Nav/Attack System (INAS), Counter MeasuresDispensing System (CMDS) and some EWcapability. In December 1993, I led a teamof IAF, HAL and DRDO officers for a firstround of talks on the upgrade proposalwith the Mikoyan design bureau and hadthe pleasure of interacting with Mr RABeliakov who was Chief Designer of thebureau. I had a groupphotograph takenof the team and himstanding near the bustof Artem Mikoyan,the famous designerwho had founded thedesign bureau. TheIndian team visitedseveral other plantswhere other systemson offer were beingmanufactured. Ofparticular interest wasthe team’s visit to theVympel missile designbureau at Tushino andthe Sokol plant atNizhny Novogorod(old name Gorkhy)dedicated to the manufacture of MiGdesigns. This was the plant whereupgradation of the first two airframeswould be carried out. We spent twoweeks in the freezing cold of Moscowbut returned to Delhi convinced that theRussian package was the manner to go.In July 1994, I led another team for thesecond round of talks and we were ableto finalise the technical specifications ofthe upgrade. Commercial negotiationsfollowed and the contract was signedsometime in 1996.The IAF positioned a team of testpilots and technical officers at theSokol plant at Nizhny to oversee theupgrade programme. Wing CommanderN Harish was the first IAF test pilot tofly the upgraded Mig-21bis now calledthe Bison (son of Bis!) in 2000. MiG-21Bison squadrons are now in operationalservice and so the long and tortuousupgrade saga of the MiG-21 recorded itsfinal chapter.I/20128176-81 Testing Times.indd 81 6/8/2012 5:41:56 PM