IAF aircraft strength to rise to 2000 soon: Official

The number of military aircraft in the country will soon increase to 2,000 from the present 1,400, thus opening up more opportunities for the MSME sector in repair and overhaul, a senior IAF officer said on Friday. There will be a huge requirement of aircraft in the next 10 to 20 years in military aviation of the country, said Air Marshall R K S Shera, Air Officer Maintenance of the IAF.

"The number is going to blow up from whatever we have today at 1,400, it will rise to 2,000 soon," he said at a program here. The induction of medium transport aircraft, Airbus C295, in the IAF will begin soon, he said adding that the force has already inducted Rafale fighter jets from Dassault Aviation of France.

Apart from these, a large number of unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, and various other machines are to be acquired in the military sector, Shera, who heads the Maintenance Command of the IAF, said. "The requirement of repair and overhaul of these aircraft and machines will go up and up," he said.

Shera said that to service and keep the machines airworthy, there is a huge opportunity for the Indian MSME sector in the manufacturing of materials, tools, and development of automated technologies. "It is not only the number of aircraft. It is also the complex technologies that are going to come to our country for which we need the right kind of academia and the industry backup so that we become more self-reliant and indigenous," he said.

Shera said that the IAF always promotes indigenization and self-reliance. All the base repair depots (BRD) of the air force are self-reliant as far as repair and overhaul is concerned and get 90 percent of requirement indigenously, he said.

"We procure 90 percent of our spares requirement indigenously and all that happens through our tier-two and tier-three industry partners; that's where we have a lot of scope for MSMEs," Shera said. He further said, "We have a challenge in the Indian Air Force as we are operating a mix of our inventory and got legacy machines from 50 to 60 years old to state-of-the-art aircraft." Shera said that the IAF operates from the 1960's vintage Avro aircraft to state-of-the-art C17s, C130J transporters and will soon have the C295 from Airbus.

With the huge array of aircraft of different vintage, there was also a large requirement of taking care of "our obsolescence", he said adding that the air force needs "industry partners to find good solutions to mitigate our obsolescence as far as our technical issues are concerned". He said that the IAF brings together academia, the R&D and the industry to find solutions to its requirements.

In order to have skilled technicians and engineers in the aviation, the IAF is working with colleges of repute and has MoUs with IITs and the IISC, Bengaluru. He said that the IAF advises the academia on the syllabus and ask them to tweak it as the air force realized that not much of military aviation was being taught in aeronautical engineering courses.

"In this area, we also find that there is a dearth of knowledge in the country," he said. Shera also said that the IAF has recently started apprentice program for ITI students at its BRDs for one or two-year terms, adding that there was a good response to it.

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