A trick question: What was the most decisive weapon of the Second
World War? If your answer, as expected, is the atom bomb, you are wrong.
It was the B-29 Superfortress bomber that delivered it.
Without the
plane, the A-Bomb would have been only a novelty. The flip side of this
question is: What was the most egregious policy failure of Imperial
Japan (besides the surprise raid on Pearl Harbour)? It was the delay in
developing its Nakajima G10N Fugaku strategic bomber with the range to
hit American island bases in the western Pacific and the US west coast
early enough in the war to make some difference. Often, the means of
delivery are as important as what’s delivered.
These historical
thoughts were prompted by the statement of the new Chief of the Air
Staff, Air Chief Marshal Arup Saha, who talked of his service achieving a
“strategic” profile in terms of its ability to pull “expeditionary”
missions. While the growing numbers in the inventory of C-17 and C-130J
transport planes, and of aerial tankers able to extend the range of
combat aircraft, make expeditionary actions easier to mount, such tasks
in the past (Operation Cactus in the Maldives, Operation Pawan in Sri
Lanka) were adequately managed with the old An-32s. The Saha statement
revealed an eagerness to sidestep the traditional criterion — a fleet of
bombers capable of long range attack — that distinguishes a strategic
air force from a theatre-oriented one, such as the IAF.
How and
why did the IAF, despite a palpable need, not become strategic? The
fault lies in the natural shrivelling of missions beginning in the 1950s
that accompanied the dimming of the strategic vision and the narrowing
of the military focus, laughably, to Pakistan as main threat, and the
quality of leaders helming the air force. The 1947 era of service brass,
mostly Group Captain-Air Commodore rank officers fast-forwarded to the
top, having loyally served the Raj and imbibed British ways of thinking,
configured the service in the manner their old bosses had planned. It
resulted in the IAF emerging as a creditable tactical force.
Short-legged
fighter aircraft with a leavening of fighter-bombers became its calling
card with the UK-built Lysanders, Tempests, and Spitfires of the 1940s
replaced by the French Dassault Ouragans and Mystere-IVs, and the
Hawker-Siddeley Hunters which, in turn, were succeeded by the Russian
Mig-21s, MiG-23s, MiG-27s, MiG-29s, and the Su-30MKIs. The odd Western
import during this latter phase — the Jaguar and Mirage 2000, were also
only short to medium range aircraft. The only dedicated bomber the IAF
ever acquired was the medium-range Canberra in the Sixties. But
highlighting its limited operational mindset was the air force’s choice
of the Folland Gnat, a local area air defence aircraft, for
licence-production in the country.
It was different early on. When
Jawaharlal Nehru’s government first approached the United States for
arms aid in 1948, it was the war-tested B-25 Mitchell bomber which
topped the procurement list. During the Second World War the
Walchandnagar aircraft company (precursor to the Hindustan Aeronautics
Ltd), among other planes, built the Avro Lancaster bombers in Bangalore.
Most of these aircraft were shipped back to Britain. But a significant
number, which could have constituted an embryonic bomber component of
the IAF, was deemed “surplus to the need” and deliberately destroyed by
the departing British at the Maintenance Command in Kanpur by hoisting
these aircraft, one by one, up by their tails to considerable height and
dropping them nose down on the hard ground.
The IAF brass at the
time — Subroto Mukherjee, M.M. Engineer, Arjan Singh, et al — did not
protest against this dastardly deed by the British, apprise Nehru and
the Indian government of the strategic cost of the loss of long range
air power, and otherwise failed to prevent these wanton acts of
sabotage. True to form, after the 1962 Himalayan military fiasco, the
IAF sought not bombers able to reach distant Chinese targets as
deterrent but the US F-104 for air defence, before settling on the
MiG-21.
What showcased the IAF’s apparent institutional
reluctance against transforming itself into a strategic force, however,
was the decision by the Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal-led regime to reject
in mid-1971 the Soviet offer of the Tu-22 Backfire strategic bomber. The
reasons trotted out verged on the farcical.
As Wing Commander
(later Air Marshal) C. V. Gole, member of the Air Marshal Sheodeo Singh
Mission to Moscow and test pilot, who flew the Tu-22 informed me, he was
appalled by the fact that he had to be winched up into the cockpit, and
that the plane would have to takeoff from as far east as Bareilly to
reach cruising altitude over Pakistan! (This and other episodes are
detailed in my book ‘Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security’.) Evidently
China didn’t figure in the threat perceptions of the Air Headquarters at
the time, nor has it done so since then.
IAF’s doggedly
defensive-tactical thinking married to theatre-level capabilities have
ensured its minimal usefulness in crises and conflicts.
Forty
years on, while China is bolstering its already strong strategic bomber
fleet (of Xian H-6K aircraft) by buying off the production line of the
most advanced Backfire, the Tu-22 M3, and prioritising the indigenous
development of the four-engined, wing-shaped, H-18 strategic stealth
bomber, IAF hopes its Su-30s assisted by aerial tankers will be a
credible deterrent and counter against the Chinese bomber armada.
It
will be prudent for the IAF, even at this late stage, to constitute a
Bomber Command and cadre, lease ten or so Tu-160 Blackjacks from Moscow
and, rather than the fifth-generation fighter, invest the Rs 35,000
crores in a programme jointly to design and produce with Russia the
successor aircraft to the Blackjack — the PAK DA, which is expected to
fly by 2025. I have long advocated acquisition of a bomber because,
compared to strike fighters and ballistic and cruise missiles it has far
more strategic utility, including in nuclear signalling, crisis
stability, and escalation control. It is a conclusion also reached by a
recent RAND report extolling the virtues of a new “penetrative bomber”.
