Singh, the publisher of Vayu magazine and
an expert on combat aviation.

“A decade or so
back, the IAF was losing almost a squadron of fighters every year to crashes.
The current rate is actually good by comparison. As the IAF fleet becomes more
modern and the old MiG-21s and MiG-27s retire, we will see a further decline in
accidents,” says Air Marshal Pranab K Barbora, a former IAF vice chief.

To reduce
helicopter accident rates, Antony told parliament that "an unusually high
number of accidents and incidents on helicopters occur, when they are operating
away from their parent base", and so all helicopter units had undergone a
special inspection. Some "shortcomings" had been found and they were
being rectified.

Tuesday, 19 March 2013

At midnight on Saturday, Pakistan's National Assembly completed its five-year term, the first time an elected government hasdiplomatic and security establishment. Any strategist would have foreseen that a positive situation in Kashmir would have freed up New Delhi to shape events in AfPak to its advantage. Sadly, New Delhi will end up fighting fires in Kashmir with one hand while juggling the AfPak playground with the other.

When future historians look back at the last two decades and the ongoing one, they will surely identify New Delhi's most inexcusable strategic folly as its failure to establish a compact with Kashmir (assuming that an even greater blunder does not lie ahead!). During the two and a half years since September 2010 when three years of widespread street violence died down, New Delhi has had the most propitious conditions for devising long-term measures to drain the swamp of