The further than 1,100 aircraft – half of them fighter jets – have logged over 6,000 flight hours in these 3 days throughout the Indian Air Force’s principal exercise in the past 30 years, with Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh ’Tony’ Dhanoa stated on the last Monday that Pakistan which was very close for watching the operation that is “shaking the heavens and splitting the Earth”.
As IAF’s assets in the largest-of-its-kind exercise, Gaganshakti-2018, go to the western sector to the eastern front “in less than 48 hours,” Dhanoa stated, all training activities in the force can be goes suspended till the two-phase drill ends on this 22nd April.
This is usually in wartime that militaries put on hold all training activities.
“We are flying a lot of sorties and dropping a lot of bombs. So in that sense — borrowing a phrase from a Rand monograph — I would say we really are shaking the heavens and splitting the Earth,” Dhanoa stated in his first public comments on the exercise which is for the wartime drill is being rehearsed.
The United States-based think tank Rand Corporation published in 2011 as a document named Shaking the Heavens and Splitting the Earth: Chinese Air Force Employment Concepts very first in this 21st Century.
The Gaganshakti-2018 exercise all set to go with its test which is for the IAF’s readiness and stamina for a two-front war that will be in the China and Pakistan.
“I wouldn’t like to comment on the two-front aspect… But every single platform in the IAF’s inventory is being exercised and we are carrying out surge operations – highest tempo operations where fighters and other platforms have clocked more sorties in three days than they normally would in over a month,” stated by Dhanoa, a decorated fighter pilot.
From deep strikes to air supremacy and long-range maritime strikes off the west coast which is going to the air defense, the IAF is practicing every plan and steps in this book on the way of its preparation for a short and passionate war.
“India has not witnessed anything at this scale since Operation Brass Tacks in 1987. Weapon delivery scores for air-to-ground munitions were exceptional, both by day and night, and pilots have done a wonderful job in overcoming fatigue during surge operations,” the IAF chief told.
Conducted in 1987, Operation Brass Tacks is regarded as the largest peacetime military exercise of India which is sent shock waves from first to last or via Pakistan.
Once again, Dhanoa recommended that the western neighbor was rattled by the sheer scale which is regarded as the complexity of Gaganshakti-2018, in spite being notified about the first phase of the exercise that was major in the western sector.
“We have noticed that they (Pakistan) are monitoring Gaganshakti-2018 closely through their airborne sensors (airborne warning and control systems),” the air chief stated further.
Dhanoa stated that the IAF jets have recorded a serviceability rate of 80% and flown the very long variety of missions flawlessly.
In IAF parlance, serviceability of a fleet that is referred to how many warplanes are obtainable and accessible for missions at any time.
The exercise has had no glitches till now, except a Jaguar fighter turning off the runway at the Bhuj airbase which is for bad weather and a few Tejas light battle aircraft just beginning and developing snags. “Hindustan Aeronautics Limited was able to fix the Tejas problems in less than 12 hours,” Dhanoa stated.
British-origin Hawk is highly developed jet trainers, capable of dropping bombs, are also joined the part in the exercise as the IAF is aggressive and struggling with a shortage of warplanes.
Measure up to a most favorable strength of 42-plus units that are needed to fight a 2-front war, the count of the IAF’s fighter squadrons has got smaller to 30 (excluding the Tejas squadron with eight aircraft).
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