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Fly-by-satire

Today, another MIG-21 crashed in Haryana. Thankfully the pilot was safe and apart from a big ass crater in a field, there was no major damage.

With 6 MIG-21 crashes in this year alone, the IAF has lost over 100 pilots in 283 accidents between 1993 and 2002. Till date it has lost over half the 976 MIG-21 fleet in air crashes. The Indian Air Force seems to have an innovative method of retaining only the best pilots. Send them all up in MIG-21s, if they survive, they must be damn good or bloody lucky.

The world has moved on to the fifth generation fighters with Short Take-off & Vertical Landing, Stealth, Internal weapons, the works, and yet we’re hell bent on sticking to flying coffins from the 1960s.

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3 Comments

    1. Thanks for the comment Su. Totally agree. Apart from the latest fads, news that goes out faster than it comes in, and fleeting thoughts, there seems to be no introspection and stock-taking being done on several fronts. Whatever happens, we have the ‘tomorrow is a different day’ attitude. It’s interestingly put in words in ‘A Wednesday’, where Naseeruddin Shah says ‘we are not resilient by force, not by choice.’ I actually wonder if that is true in all cases. In some, it is resilient by force, in some, by choice, and in most cases, it’s sheer indifference. And I’m not talking only with regard to the Air Force, but even in everyday lives of us common folk too.

      1. Yes absolutely…same thing is depicted through a street play in Halla Bol & many other such movies. We only appreciate the movie but lose the message behind it.

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