I had said this years ago that India purchase of s400 would be a game changer. It was borne out in op sindoor. Perhaps Much more so that the raffle.Prem Kumar wrote: ↑17 Aug 2025 12:07 I'd agree with Avinandan. We have done significant progress over the last decade, but prior to that, the IAF had a jock-mentality and SAMs were treated as 2nd class citizens. Air-defense meant scrambling Mig-21s
Akash was inducted after laborious trials. Barak-8 got in via bribes. S-400 happened due to Modi sarkar
The IAF is still dragging its heels on Akash-NG & I suspect its because its a direct competitor to Barak-8 and hence the lobby is against it
BMD-1 has come and gone & so has BMD-2, but they remain tech-demonstrators and not mass deployed systems. As always, we will wait for the mythical BMD-3 which can defeat hypersonics
Plus we've had doctrinal blindness. Examples:
a) BMDs must defend only prominent cities (as opposed to defending even airbases, forward-deployed ammunition storage etc)
b) Ballistic Missiles are under the purview of the SFC, which meant there was no Rocket Force. There was no role for Pralay as a conventional airport-buster, tasked under the IA or IAF
We still have ways to go. I am glad the PM spoke up. Hope this results in his direct supervision and orders for Akash-NG, QRSAM, Kusha-series, BMDs etc
It is truly unfortunate that the fgfa did not materialize thanks to geopolitical exigencies, and the Iafs need to reduce Russian inventory. Today it is ahead of the raffle in every parameter and in the foreseeable future the gap will only widen..