Air Force to outsource civilian jobs

Efforts were on to downsize and rationalise the manpower in the Indian Air Force (IAF) by making personnel multi-skilled and by privatising civilian administrative jobs, Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy said on Wednesday.

He said it would take five years to downsize the strength of the air force from its present strength of 150,000, but rejected any move to curtail recruitment saying that would "amount to hitting the age profile of the IAF".

Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has set up a committee to address both quality of recruitment and issues related to age profiles in the Army, Navy and Air Force. The committee, headed by the defence secretary, is expected to give its report by the end of the year.

On technical aspects, Krishnaswamy said efforts were being speeded up to acquire more multi-role fighters to ensure that the IAF's squadron strength was not alarmingly depleted.

Addressing reporters on the eve of the 72nd anniversary of the IAF, that the country's nuclear arsenal delivery arm, the strategic forces command, was "fully operational" at various locations.

His comments assume significance with the army raising more missile groups to be armed with the 700 km surface-to-surface Agni-I and 2000 km medium range Agni-II missiles.

While agreeing that the IAF fighter squadron strength was already below 39, as opposed to 45 as visualised, the Air Chief said his force had already projected its requirement of up to 125 multi-role aircraft to the government and that the project was in the process of clearance.

He said the new fighters would be acquired much before IAF discarded its ageing fleet of 300 MiG-21's in the next few years.

Krishnaswamy said for the first time in 34 years the IAF fighter accident ratio of fighters had been the lowest this year at 83 per 1,000 adding it was still higher than the ideal accident rate of 5 per 1,000.

The air chief outlined steps being taken to acquire more indigenous radars to plug the wide gaps in the air surveillance cover of the country. "We have placed orders with Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) for more advanced Indra-II radars and for three-dimensional radars to improve air surveillance coverage," the Air Chief said.

He said the IAF was working with civil aviation authorities to integrate civilian radars for an improved national air defence system. He said the IAF was "expecting delivery of 10 more upgraded Mirage 2000 from France by early next year". The purchase of additional Mirages and delivery of the upgraded su-30mki along with upgrades to Jaguar deep-penetration strike aircraft should see the IAF squadron strength back to its old level".

In tacit criticism of the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme, that Krishnaswamy admitted was running "a bit slow" he said this was one of the reasons India had decided to acquire multi-role fighters.