Indian Military Aviation

Surya · Post by **Surya** » 12 Oct 2011 06:27

TOilet writers are idiots

at this age sooner or later one expects to move to a desk job so if thats the reason for suicide there will be so many

andy B · Post by **andy B** » 12 Oct 2011 08:15

Shiv ji,

Given that you and some of other senior brfites have met Sqdn Leader Baldev Singh a few times....would it be possible for you guys to write up a short write up in memory of Baldy...we could ask the mods to put it up on a new thread or in the IAF section for people to pay their respects...just a suggestion onlee.

suryag · Post by **suryag** » 12 Oct 2011 08:24

So the driver is the story teller over here ? I hope the cops are looking at all possible angles

Kapil · Post by **Kapil** » 12 Oct 2011 08:53

This is terrible news-- I saw him at aero India earlier this year, couldnt speak much to him then.
Sree and I had met him at a do in Delhi last december,his eyes lit up when he recalled us from BR and we spent a great time together.
He was very fond of Kukke Suresh and of Shiv too.
I recall a IJT test pilot saying Baldy Sir is a tough love kind of a boss.

What a loss.A prayer for his family.

sum · Post by **sum** » 12 Oct 2011 08:54

One more tit-bit here:
HAL’s top executive ends life

The mysterious death comes in the backdrop of Singh, 58, collapsing in a recent HAL board meeting, though subsequent medical tests revealed he was normal.

So, there was something really bad going on in his personal life, i guess...

Sources close to the family said: “He was to travel to Delhi on Tuesday to the Defence Secretary’s (Defence Production) meeting but he had told the family he would not go.”

The police, quoting the first information report (FIR), said Singh left home around 9 am in the official car (Maruti Suzuki SX-4) and had directed his driver Rajesh to go to Bangalore international airport at Devanahalli.

However, he asked Rajesh to alight from the car near a flyover, took his phone from him on the excuse that his own phone had no battery charge, and asked him to wait there until he returned. “He had said he had to pick a friend up from a place nearby and that he would be back. Despite the driver insisting that he would travel with him, Singh had ordered him to stay back.”

Following a long wait, Rajesh, the police said, reported the matter to the HAL Corporate Office on Cubbon Road, as he was worried about Singh. A message from the corporate office that a director of theirs was missing led to the police to send out wireless messages and eventually find the body when some passersby informed them about the same.

“Going by the incident, it appears to be a pre-meditated move. Why would he take away the driver’s mobile otherwise,” Chelvaraj remarked.

pradeepe · Post by **pradeepe** » 12 Oct 2011 09:03

RIP sir. Condolences to his family.

merlin · Post by **merlin** » 12 Oct 2011 09:15

Extremely sad news. From the only time I met him I remember him as a very humble person for his level of achievements and an overall very nice person. Heartfelt condolences to his family.

sum · Post by **sum** » 12 Oct 2011 09:16

X-post:

sum wrote:Has the turf war between IA/AIF over the AAC become so much that the PM has to step in and publicly call out the parties?

PM asks Army, IAF to iron out differences

In what looks like a veiled reprimand to the Army, which is keen on building its own aviation wing rather than depending on the Indian Air Force, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday asked the armed forces to ''optimise the use of scarce resources''through ''long-term planning and creation of common institutions.''

“The government will never fight shy of finding the funds for the modernisation of our forces. At the same time we have to recognise that resources are not unlimited. I would urge upon you to optimise the use of scarce resources, particularly when we build new capacities for meeting emerging threats,” Singh said addressing the combined commander conference here.

The prime minister’s comments come in the backdrop of an ongoing tussle between the IAF and Army on the creation of the Army Aviation Wing. The two services are not leaving any stone unturned to protect their own turf.

As the Army is keen to have its own helicopter unit comprising new attack helicopters, IAF Chief NAK Browne in the last week stated that a 1986 document — Joint Army and Air Force Instructions — clearly demarcated the role and responsibility of the two services.

“As per the JAAI-1986, the IAF will operate and maintain all helicopters including the light utility and attack helicopters of the Army. But the command and control will be with the Army. In the same manner, the 22 new attack helicopters will also be under the command of the Army but they will be maintained by the IAF,” Brown said.

The prime minister has left to the two sparring services to iron out the differences.
“You are the best judges of how this can be done, but advance and long-term planning and creation of common institutions, communication networks and infrastructure are some examples of how this could be achieved,” he said.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 12 Oct 2011 09:17

Kapil wrote: I recall a IJT test pilot saying Baldy Sir is a tough love kind of a boss.

I heard from two other close friends of his that Baldy was basically a fighter. Not one to give up. Something is really odd.

wig · Post by **wig** » 12 Oct 2011 09:26

regarding the tragedy of Sqn Ldr (rtd) Baldev Singh a snippet in today's Tribune.- HAL director found dead

Squadron Leader (retd) Baldev Singh, director for corporate planning and marketing at State-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), Baldev Singh apparently committed suicide near Nandi Hills, about 50 km from Bangalore.

A passerby found his body hanging from a tree around noon on the way to Nandi Hills. “We then reached the spot and lowered the body from the tree and identified him to be Baldev Singh of HAL from a credit card in his pocket,” Chickballapur rural DSP S. Chelvaraj said.

He is survived by his ailing wife and two sons, Mohit Singh and Nimith Singh. While Mohit lives in Singapore, Nimith is in the US.

may the departed soul rest in peace and may the Almighty grant strength to the family to bear with this crushing loss.

PratikDas · Post by **PratikDas** » 12 Oct 2011 09:29

One wonders if this was a ploy to stall India getting MMRCA, with HAL locally manufacturing the majority of aircraft. A very heavy price to pay if this is a game.

Shiv ji, I read your post of you asking why he did this and I choked up.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 12 Oct 2011 09:56

RIP Baldev Singh

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 12 Oct 2011 09:57

PratikDas wrote:One wonders if this was a ploy to stall India getting MMRCA, with HAL locally manufacturing the majority of aircraft. A very heavy price to pay if this is a game.

I would suggest to you and others to keep the CT out , unless you hear something officially about it.

Let the departed soul RIP.

PratikDas · Post by **PratikDas** » 12 Oct 2011 10:00

That is a given. No apologies from me.

Bala Vignesh · Post by **Bala Vignesh** » 12 Oct 2011 10:09

I had spotted baldevji a couple of times near the Gurudwara at ulsoor..
may god grant peace to his soul..

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 12 Oct 2011 10:12

What has a retired officer have anything to do with india getting MMRCA

PratikDas · Post by **PratikDas** » 12 Oct 2011 10:20

Ok, so since his position in HAL is not a conspiracy theory, I think it is fair for me to reply with the comment that he was "Director (Corporate Planning & Marketing) of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited". He hadn't retired from HAL.

Bala Vignesh · Post by **Bala Vignesh** » 12 Oct 2011 10:28

I have a query..
Why is a senior flight test pilot, head of marketing??? Shouldn't that normally go to a Marketing guy or to a PR guy???

Neeraj Bagga · Post by **Neeraj Bagga** » 12 Oct 2011 12:04

RIP. India has lost another brave, dedicated and talented soul.

Something is really fishy.

Wg Cdr (retd) Rajiv Kothiyal, who had worked with Singh for several years on the light combat aircraft programme in the mid-1990s, said: “It is impossible for me to digest that he has committed suicide. Baldev was not the type with a weak heart. He was a happy, full of energy kind of guy, taking things by the stride.”

However, he asked Rajesh to alight from the car near a flyover, took his phone from him on the excuse that his own phone had no battery charge, and asked him to wait there until he returned. “He had said he had to pick a friend up from a place nearby and that he would be back. Despite the driver insisting that he would travel with him, Singh had ordered him to stay back.”

I hope there is a high level investigation.

suryag · Post by **suryag** » 12 Oct 2011 14:07

felt really sad after seeing this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO-cbmX4_oc

RIP Baldev Sir

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 12 Oct 2011 14:30

suryag wrote:felt really sad after seeing this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO-cbmX4_oc

RIP Baldev Sir

Yes. It is sad.

VinodTK · Post by **VinodTK** » 13 Oct 2011 06:08

Military satellite delayed again by a year

:
Indian armed forces are still to get their own dedicated surveillance and communication satellites despite several years of promises and plans, leave alone offensive space capabilities like ASAT (anti-satellite) weapons or advanced directed-energy laser weapons.

Moreover, the government continues to keep the desperately-needed tri-Service Aerospace Command in cold storage, even though China has taken to the military exploitation of space, which includes ASAT capabilities, in a major way.

Top defence officials admit the much-awaited launch of the naval communication and surveillance satellite, "Rohini", has been once again delayed by a year or so. Satellites for Army-IAF will only follow thereafter.
:
:

merlin · Post by **merlin** » 13 Oct 2011 10:01

Follows the pattern of delaying critical technologies and capabilities for the armed forces by the current GoI

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 19 Oct 2011 05:51

The latest issue of Vayu has another great article from AM Philip Rajkumar about his days testing missiles and bombs - but he deliberately restricts himself to a period more than 30 years ago.

Did you know that in 1973-74 the Armament Testing Lab had replaced the very limited Infra red seeker of the K-13 (Atoll) misile with a radar seeker of equivalent size and weight. The modified missile was then able to follow radar signals from the parent aircraft and hit targets hidden by cloud/fog. The IAF was not interested.

On the other hand the IAF wanted a dumb bomb with fins to retard it so that it could be dropped from 100 feet and still allow the plane to escape the bomb blast. Simple fins were designed to be held by canvas straps that could withstand airspeed up to 450 knots. But quality control was poor and they could never design straps that could withstand speeds up to 1000 kmph which is what the IAF wanted. But later parachute retarded bombs were successfully designed. Before testing them the cameras designed to film the bomb drop became unserviceable. A search for a replacement revealed brand new cameras that were unused and had come with the B-24 Liberators and were not even known to be on the IAF inventory. Those cameras are still with ASTE apparently.

In another innovative act they fitted an R-60 on the overwing pylons of a Jaguar and test fired it successfully. The entire testing was done in 90 days at a cost of Rs 25,000! The problem after that was to design an overwing pylon for the Jag to carry the R-60. The pylons ended up being too high and AM Rajkumar tested the Jag with the new pylons and found that the flight characteristics of the Jag were unacceptable with teh R-60 pylons.

tsarkar · Post by **tsarkar** » 19 Oct 2011 08:42

shiv wrote:Did you know that in 1973-74 the Armament Testing Lab had replaced the very limited Infra red seeker of the K-13 (Atoll) misile with a radar seeker of equivalent size and weight. The modified missile was then able to follow radar signals from the parent aircraft and hit targets hidden by cloud/fog. The IAF was not interested.

Interesting news. I had heard bits and pieces on this earlier, but this confirms and elaborates. Apparently the need to keep the enemy in the radar cone and the difficulty in doing so in a dogfight resulted in the idea being dropped. The twin 23mm gun pack was favoured as a more robust solution.

AdityaM · Post by **AdityaM** » 19 Oct 2011 09:13

NDTV alert: Mig crash in Lahaul Spiti

Pratyush · Post by **Pratyush** » 19 Oct 2011 09:16

^^^

The sad part is not that the Idea was dropped due to the problems mentioned by T Sarkar. The sad part is that the Idea was not persisted with. If it had been persisted with & developed further, then who knows, maybe the IAF may have become self sufficient in terms of AAM. Both IR and radar guided varities. Rather then being dependent on imported solutions.

Another example of the lost decade of the Indian aviation sector.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 19 Oct 2011 09:24

CNN-IBN says its a Mig-29 that crashed ,pilot still missing

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 19 Oct 2011 09:31

around the same time israeli air force went ahead with the pathetic shafrir 1 and now israel is one of the world leaders in AAMs. neither can you give the argument that Indian armed forces had to fight and therefore had to be armed with ready to use weapons. IDF was in a much more critical situation where a defeat would have meant the end of the nation.
just shows the shortsightedness of our armed forces. in this aspect the mindset has been more akin to that of the forces of burundi than an upcoming power.

>> CNN-IBN says its a Mig-29 that crashed ,pilot still missing
dang !

bmallick · Post by **bmallick** » 19 Oct 2011 09:32

Pratyush wrote:^^^

The sad part is not that the Idea was dropped due to the problems mentioned by T Sarkar. The sad part is that the Idea was not persisted with. If it had been persisted with & developed further, then who knows, maybe the IAF may have become self sufficient in terms of AAM. Both IR and radar guided varities. Rather then being dependent on imported solutions.

Another example of the lost decade of the Indian aviation sector.

Totally concur with you. The article clearly shows that we have developed a RF seeker which could home on to guidance by parent radar in the 70s. Also it was small & light enough to fit on a missile. The same seeker could have been developed further, so that we could have developed longer ranged AAM, whole family of radar guided SAMs. Maybe the Trishul's plagued problem with guidance would not have happened. The possibilities were endless.

It goes on to show, how much foresight is required on such decisions.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 19 Oct 2011 10:00

Actually they also developed a "target missile" a missile with a range of 40 km that would serve as a target for testing another AAM. AM Rajkumar rues that this was not developed into a guided AAM which would have been feasible in his opinion.

The other interesting titbits that he writes about are things which we jingos do not even begin to eb aware of as we construct war scenarios.

For example he says that the MiG 21 type 77 was used to test the K-13 using a target missile on one wing and the K-13 on the other. The target missile would keep on glowing with a flare even after its rocket motor burned out so the real AAM could be fired. The target missile had to be launched with the plane pointing up 30 degrees and when the target started falling the second missile had to be fired. So far so good. The problem was that the MiG 21 engine could shut down due to missile plume ingestion. So the procedure had to be carried out after the "engine relight" switch was armed and ready in case the engine flamed out. The catch was that if the switch was not turned off within 120 seconds, the relight mechanism would burn out and be unusable!!

The other thing he says about testing the R-60 missile was that he read the fine print on the manual and read that even a small spark from the tail plume of the "target missile" could make the chasing R-60 missile warhead to explode. That meant that he had to make sure that the target missile was far enough away from the R-60. In fact one missile did that but AM Rajkumar has turned away by then, having been forewarned.

Talk about pilot workload. Dogfights are probably easy compared to actually keeping a plane in the air.

suryag · Post by **suryag** » 19 Oct 2011 10:07

According to tarmak BSF ALH has crashed near Ranchi

pray pilots are safe

Aditya_V · Post by **Aditya_V** » 19 Oct 2011 10:24

Today seems a bad day, Mig 29 and BSF Alh crash. Pilot in Mig 29 case missing and 3 people including pilots are dead in the BSF Helicopter crash.

tsarkar · Post by **tsarkar** » 19 Oct 2011 10:34

Earlier AAMs had short seeker ranges and limited FoV. Missile developers visualized enemy fighters and bombers flying in a straight like akin to WW2 massed formations and missiles could pick them up. Unfortunately in the real world, a short climb or turn would take the nimble enemy fighter out of missile seeker FoV.

The IAF had very wisely developed the twin 23mm gun pack for the MiG21 given the unreliability of K-13. It is interesting to note that US F-4 was designed without a gun like MiG21 and after Vietnam, later variants added a gun just like IAF.

IAF didn't have much luck with K-13, also the pilots didn't exhibit much discipline in employing the missile, often firing the missile outside the envelope.

http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Histo ... Singh.html

PAF was luckier with the equally limited Sidewinder, as the massive Su-7 engines acted as Sidewinder magnets. Also, they intercepted IAF fighters as they were egressing, with limited fuel and flew in a straight line at medium altitudes, and fell within the Sidewinder engagement envelope.

http://kaiser-aeronaut.blogspot.com/201 ... chive.html

I am curious to understand why we didn't employ MiG-21 & K-13 against Pakistani B-57s that flew straight and at altitude.

One of the first missiles manufactured at BDL was K-13 in 60s & 70s. Today we manufacture no AAM. Agree with members that we didn't exhibit foresight.

chackojoseph · Post by **chackojoseph** » 19 Oct 2011 13:25

Aditya_V wrote:Today seems a bad day, Mig 29 and BSF Alh crash. Pilot in Mig 29 case missing and 3 people including pilots are dead in the BSF Helicopter crash.

Now you can see the inference:

MiG-29 crash = bad Indian Pilots training.

ALH crash = bad helicopter made by India.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 19 Oct 2011 16:54

chackojoseph wrote:
Aditya_V wrote:Today seems a bad day, Mig 29 and BSF Alh crash. Pilot in Mig 29 case missing and 3 people including pilots are dead in the BSF Helicopter crash.
Now you can see the inference:

MiG-29 crash = bad Indian Pilots training.

ALH crash = bad helicopter made by India.

Chinese troops in PoK. We are about taste defeat. No country has so many powerful enemies and so much internal incompetence.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 19 Oct 2011 16:59

tsarkar wrote:
IAF didn't have much luck with K-13, also the pilots didn't exhibit much discipline in employing the missile, often firing the missile outside the envelope.

AM Rajkumar has something to say about the K-13. Its seeker had a very narrow angle of view facing forwards. If a target was acquired the pilot would hear an audible tone and he had to gently point the whole aircraft in a direction where the audible whine became loudest before firing the missile. Presumably a quick maneuver would make the seeker lose its lock. IAF pilots complained that they would rather have a light in the cockpit when the seeker picked up a target instead of this audible whine. This was never implemented. It was a simple enough thing to do but it was not implemented even when the K-13 received a radar seeker.

Aditya_V · Post by **Aditya_V** » 19 Oct 2011 17:10

chackojoseph wrote:
Aditya_V wrote:Today seems a bad day, Mig 29 and BSF Alh crash. Pilot in Mig 29 case missing and 3 people including pilots are dead in the BSF Helicopter crash.
Now you can see the inference:

MiG-29 crash = bad Indian Pilots training.

ALH crash = bad helicopter made by India.

Err. I hope you referring to inferences made by other in Media who may not be as professional as you are cause I have made no such inference and I understand military aviation will have its share of crashes.

chackojoseph · Post by **chackojoseph** » 19 Oct 2011 17:20

^^^^ Not you. Expect that from phoren media. Just being sarcastic.

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 19 Oct 2011 17:29

shiv wrote:
tsarkar wrote:
IAF didn't have much luck with K-13, also the pilots didn't exhibit much discipline in employing the missile, often firing the missile outside the envelope.
AM Rajkumar has something to say about the K-13. Its seeker had a very narrow angle of view facing forwards. If a target was acquired the pilot would hear an audible tone and he had to gently point the whole aircraft in a direction where the audible whine became loudest before firing the missile. Presumably a quick maneuver would make the seeker lose its lock. IAF pilots complained that they would rather have a light in the cockpit when the seeker picked up a target instead of this audible whine. This was never implemented. It was a simple enough thing to do but it was not implemented even when the K-13 received a radar seeker.

IIRC sidewinder worked the same way, remember reading about a IDF mirage sortie chasing syrian migs a while back with the "sidewinder growl" thing...