Indian Army Cheetah Chopper enters Pakistan airspace

[Aditya_V]

may be someday we will have a simulator simulating the terrains of that region.. if we don't have it already.... we need highly accurate GIS for that.. ... with all the cartographic satellites we are sending up there.. there should be some outcome soon..

May be someday Pakis will be out of POK so such situations become irrelevant.

[Rahul M]

prithvi, CAIR already had done work on these during kargil, producing easy to use accurate 3D maps of the area.

[sum]

Isnt CAIR related to robotics development? ( if you meant DRDO CAIR)

[rohitvats]

^^^You'd be surprised to know how much is acheived by sheer application of human skills - skills developed with patience, persistence and dedication. The fact the recent incident is a gross aberration and not a norm - inspite of very hostlie environmental conditions and lack of technologgy - is a commentary on the skills of the people who fly and maintain these birds.

PAGING MODS - I think it is time to close this thread.

[Shrinivasan]

PAGING MODS - I think it is time to close this thread.

Rohit, We need to have this thread open till MOD / IA releases an accurate account of the happenings from an Indian perspective, alternatively, to lessen the noise level, MODs can lock it till this update comes out, then it can be unlocked... In this way, we have saved all info (in public domain) related to this incident. my 0.00002 paise.

[Rahul M]

Isnt CAIR related to robotics development? ( if you meant DRDO CAIR)

same CAIR, they work on these areas as well. it was then under Dr M Vidyasagar who began his career as a child prodigy of sorts (PhD at 21 etc) later moved on to TCS in 2000. he felt with kalam sahab gone from the helm of DRDO, the environment was no longer the same.

I will keep this thread open for a few days but I doubt we will know much more.

[Pratyush]

[OT]

I am not a big fan of hindi movies .. and especially Sharukh Khan.. but was the movie Veer-Zara story line based on an Indian pilot trapped behind enemy lines falling in love with a pakistani chick?

No,

But it was an uber WKK story.

[ramana]

No hurry rohitvats. Let the final picture emerge. USually occurs three to four months after hulla settles down.

[member_20029]

No hurry rohitvats. Let the final picture emerge. USually occurs three to four months after hulla settles down.

I agree. I just hope that the Pakis don't throw too much of a hissy fit over it.
They don't need another excuse to fight about...

[Lalmohan]

no, they've already done all their posturing and huffing and puffing

[member_20029]

no, they've already done all their posturing and huffing and puffing

well, I just hope that's all they're gonna do.

[ramana]

Enjoy the whine!!!

Ungrateful India
News & Views
Mohammad Jamil
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=122319

Indian military’s chopper that violated Pakistan’s airspace was allowed to return to Kargil within hours after the crew explained that it was due to the bad weather that they entered Pakistani airspace. Instead of appreciating and expressing gratitude, India chose to unleash propaganda against Pakistan stating that “Indian security has been breached in the sensitive Siachen Glacier-Aksai Chin-Ladakh-Kargil sector as Pakistan Army downloaded the GPS coordinates of all helipads from the army helicopter that strayed across the Line of Control (LoC) into Skardu region”. To add insult to the injury, Indian officials reportedly said the incident was being probed at a high level as the GPS data of the helicopter was found wiped out along with nicknames and code signs of all the helipads in the 14 Corps. There is a possibility that after being traced, the crew might have erased the data so that Pakistan may not download the same. But India uses every incident to paint Pakistan in poor light, though it should have expressed gratitude for the good treatment meted out to the chopper’s crew, and which was returned the same day.

It has to be mentioned that two Indian fighter planes had shot down Pakistan Navy’s training aircraft in August 1999, killing all the 16 officers and sailors on board. The wreckage of the plane was found 2-3 km inside Pakistan territory in marshy areas, Badin district, around 100 nautical miles off Karachi, which means Pakistani aircraft was in Pakistani airspace and territory when it was shot down. The plane - French-made Breguet Atlantic maritime patrol aircraft - had left PNS Mehran airbase in the city at 9.15am for a routine training flight to the coastal areas of southern Sindh. It was scheduled to return to its base after four hours. America’s most secretive National Security Agency (NSA) satellite data had then confirmed that Indian fighter planes shot down a Pakistani unarmed aircraft within Pakistani territory resulting in the death of 16 people. A secret National Security Agency spy satellite transcript leaked to selected American and Canadian journalists had confirmed earlier reports that Indian control tower ordered its fighters to shoot down the Pakistan plane and return to base quickly.

Transcript recorded from the scene had also indicated that Indian fighters also violated Pakistani airspace during their operation. Indians also tried to get hold of the bodies. An Indian publication confirmed that Indian Border Security Force (BSF) personnel met with stiff resistance from the Pakistani Rangers when they tried to retrieve the bodies of Pakistani personnel whose plane was shot down by the Indian Air Force.

Pakistan had taken a team of foreign diplomats for a visit to the site. Military attaches from the embassies of 28 countries including the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany and France, flew to the site in five helicopters. With the help of the Global Positioning System, instruments, charts and maps, the attaches were briefed about the location of the site to show that it was within the Pakistani territories. But shameless Indian officialdom brazen-facedly insisted that Pakistani aircraft was within Indian airspace when it was shot down by 2 Mirages. There is a long list of India’s machinations. Apart from the core issue of Kashmir, Siachen, Sir Creek and violation of Indus water treaty are the glaring examples of India’s intransigence. After 26/11, India had unleashed propaganda against Pakistan, and tried to get Pakistan declared as a state that sponsored terrorism. India should remember that if there was a Mumbai, there was Samjhota Express too.

One day Doggy Singh will for this.

[rohitvats]

^^^The ability of the pukes to lie and bluff simply amazes me...these people are pathological liers who themselves now don't then they're lying and when they are not. What has humanity done to suffer such scum bags???

[aniket]

They also have the ability to report wrong information.In the article its written that their aircraft was shot down by 2 Mirages, while in reality it was shot down by 2 MIG-21's.

[chetak]

^^^The ability of the pukes to lie and bluff simply amazes me...these people are pathological liers who themselves now don't then they're lying and when they are not. What has humanity done to suffer such scum bags???

we should have figured out all this before we got into mud wrestling with them,no?

our Indian DDM gleefully carries a lot of this motivated stuff with a pro paki slant in the name of freedom of the press and anti hindutva, specially undie tv and also turdesai and his banshee wife.

[Hari Nair]

I have a bit of a contrarian view on this:
- Straying across the LC despite having a GPS set is barely excusable. Unless of course, it was a hand held and the batteries were exhausted or the set went unserviceable. Even in which case, the terrain has well defined valleys with clear orientations. The good old time-distance-direction valley nav thing works quite well there.
- There is no such thing as a 'rudimentary GPS set' as far as aviation grade sets go. Even the most basic aviation grade sets can be used to maximum benefit for air navigation.
- The weather in the Leh-Kargil sector does not suddenly pack up. There is a certain inertia to the weather process there, which is mainly affected by Western Disturbances that have well defined and predictable frontal-type weather that usually affects the entire region as a whole. I am given to understand that there was a mild Western Disturbance in the region at that time. In which case, there was the need for extra caution by the crew.
- We are bloody lucky that our blessed 'friends' across let them get back and that too with the helicopter- all intact.
- Obviously they would have had a look at our on-board or handheld GPS. That's what anybody would (and should) have done. Quite rather naive to expect otherwise. Unless they had a means to download the data, they may have noted a few coordinates manually. Wiping the GPS data (as reported in a news article) may have been a precaution to ensure the crew had not marked certain positions of theirs, during the intrusion.
- A thoroughly avoidable incident. Shows us in poor professional light, similar to the earlier incidents, if you ask me.

[member_20029]

I have a bit of a contrarian view on this:
- A thoroughly avoidable incident. Shows us in poor professional light, similar to the earlier incidents, if you ask me.

I don't necessarily agree, bhai.

the how do you know that the Cheetah wasn't *meant* to stray the border as some "accidental" recon?

I mean, there IS precedent. Ever few months or so, some IA Jawan or IAF fighter enters Paki airspace, and the pigs get all flustered and start threatening and all, but nothing actually happens. If so, then a hiding-under-your-nose type recce. mission would be possible.
how do you know the Cheetah operators didn't designate and hide targets on a different GPS reciever?


[but at the same time, it could be an accident too...]

[rohitvats]

<SNIP> I don't necessarily agree, bhai. <SNIP>

That is Group Captain Hari Nair (retd.) you are speaking with...

A short introduction:

Gp Capt Nair flies for HAL's Rotory Wing Flight Ops team. He was commissioned in the helicopter stream of the IAF in December 1983. He has been associated with the Dhruv (ALH) programme, and commanded a combined Chetak-Cheetah unit in the Western Sector. He formed and commanded the Sarang Helicopter Display Team comprising Dhruv helicopters, during 2003-2005. He served as Chief Operations Officer, in an IAF base in the North-East

[Pratyush]

Well nothing like teaching fuchas...........

[nitinr]

- A thoroughly avoidable incident. Shows us in poor professional light, similar to the earlier incidents, if you ask me.

If this is the case then there is something seriously wrong with training.
If I get it right as to what you implied, these kind of incidents have happened before and still it has happened. Sir can you shed some light so to why such incidents happen and what can be done so they are not repeated.

[member_20029]

That is Group Captain Hari Nair (retd.) you are speaking with...

<self-facepalm>

my apologies!

[Vivek K]

does this incident have anything to do in the inter services rivalry on the induction of copters into the IA?

[shiv]

- A thoroughly avoidable incident. Shows us in poor professional light, similar to the earlier incidents, if you ask me.

If this is the case then there is something seriously wrong with training.
If I get it right as to what you implied, these kind of incidents have happened before and still it has happened. Sir can you shed some light so to why such incidents happen and what can be done so they are not repeated.

I am not Hari Nair but..

If you read reminiscences of forces officers - many of which appear on BR and on other media you find that the forces are an organization of humans who aim to be as close to being error-free as possible but are not perfect. People are making mistakes all the time. Training is to try and ensure that mistakes are minimized. If we wear rose tinted glasses and imagine that the forces consist of perfectly trained people who are ideal and perfect in all ways - we will be making a mistake. That is not true of any organization. Any organization that believes that it has reached perfection is going to go rapidly downhill in months if not weeks.

The ability to recognize and admit that mistakes are being made and efforts to stop them (by various means, training, punishment, incentives etc) is very important. In this case the mistake led to a very public incident, but if you spend time reading the right material or talking to the right people, you find mistakes where aircraft were lost. There are some famous incidents like a pilot who pulled the eject lever instead of something else, and a technician who lit a cigarette and burned a helo down, and another pilot who deviated from his flight path to conduct a macho show off maneuver and crashed and died. Mistakes are being made all the time by highly trained people and that includes doctors, accountants, bankers, F1 drivers and teachers.

If you read the IAF's online Flight Safety magazine you find that it is full of tips and advice for pilots and other personnel on how to avoid mistakes. If you read Surgical literature you will find that full of references to how mistakes can be made and are made and how they can be avoided. But you will never find a surgeon or surgical literature that will give you a 100% error free experience. Avoiding mistakes is a process, not an end point. You can try and minimize and keep working on it. That is about all.

[Sid]

I do not want to pick on inter services rivalry, but can this be a reason why there is so much halla-gulla on this incident?

This incident also happened when so much hot air was blowing between IA/IAF over the control of chopper fleet.

[pure speculation on my side]

[shiv]

I do not want to pick on inter services rivalry, but can this be a reason why there is so much halla-gulla on this incident?

This incident also happened when so much hot air was blowing between IA/IAF over the control of chopper fleet.

[pure speculation on my side]

I think the "inter services rivalry" story is being applied to a whole lot of things in the last 2-3 weeks giving new meaning to the expression "Out of sight, out of mind". Inter services rivarlry about control of aviation assets has been around for many decades and is nothing new. It was out of sight and out of BRF minds. It is just getting blamed on BRF after the news made it to the headlines as it sometimes does once every few years.

If an Indian helicopter strayed into Pakistan due to an error on the part of some Indian pilot/navigator or guide, then that error must be nailed. Inter services rivalry is not the problem, the error is.