India’s Transforming Air Posture: An Emerging 21st-Century Heavyweight

Speaker: Benjamin S. Lambeth

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is currently the world’s fourth-largest air arm, operating more than 1,300 aircraft out of some 60 bases nationwide. Until the early 1990s, it was almost entirely a support entity for the Indian Army and, as such, was imbued with a narrow tactical mindset and mission orientation. Today, in marked contrast, it has acquired independent strategic missions, including that of nuclear deterrence and retaliation, and it is a diversified force with aspirations to global reach and status. It also is a full-spectrum combat air arm with a precision conventional strike capability, fielding not only fourth-generation multirole fighters, but also force-extending tankers, a recently-acquired Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) capability, intertheater airlifters, remotely-piloted aircraft with multispectral sensors, and the beginnings of a military space surveillance capability. In both content and vector, the institutional “flight plan” now being followed by the IAF’s leadership shows remarkable parallels to the USAF’s transformation that began after Vietnam and that has continued ever since.

The IAF is mainly a fighter force, with the Russian-designed and indigenously-produced Su-30MKI multirole combat aircraft its current pride of inventory. A service in which fighter pilots have traditionally ruled the roost, it projects a deeply-ingrained “can-do” attitude. Among the main features of its operational culture are strong traditions, an educated and technically literate officer corps, an ability to absorb and operate high-technology equipment quickly, and able aircrews trained to Western standards of proficiency and inculcated in the manner of the British Royal Air Force, of which the IAF was an offshoot. With respect to doctrine and concepts of operations, the IAF now stands at the forefront of air power thought worldwide, with its leaders increasingly convinced that any future conflict involving India will be “air-led” and that its chances for success will hinge heavily on what the IAF can contribute to the joint fight. High-profile international training exchanges have become an especially welcome focus of IAF activity over the past decade. The service first opened up to the outside world of military aviation in a major way in 2003 when it invited a detachment of French Air Force fighters to Gwalior to take part in an air-to-air exercise called Garuda. A year later, Exercise Cope India 2004 involving six USAF F-15Cs from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska was held at Gwalior. That evolution represented the IAF fighter community’s first opportunity to interact closely with American airmen since an earlier exercise in 1963 brought a small detachment of F-100s to India from the USAF’s Pacific Air Forces.

The IAF’s participation in the USAF’s Red Flag exercise in August 2008 was by far its most elaborate involvement in such international events since that practice first began on a regular basis. In addition to its sought-after value of offering training for IAF aircrews in a complex operating environment, an important collateral goal of the effort was to test the IAF’s capability for deployment and force sustainment on a global scale.

Until recently, India’s relations with the United States were distant at best. For decades, the Indian government had serious political problems with its American counterpart, mainly because of Washington’s close ties with Pakistan going back to the early Cold War years. The long-standing American inclination to favor Pakistan geopolitically created a major disincentive against the pursuit of cooperative bilateral ties with India by the United States, as did the predominant American image of India for years as merely half of the annoying “India-Pakistan problem.” Today, both countries live in a changed world of increasingly shared security concerns, with a rapidly developing China and an unstable Pakistan, as well as radical Islamist extremism and its associated threats of international terrorism, ever more worrisome as both present and more long-term challenges. In this new context, mutual understanding and a mutual willingness on the part of the two countries to pursue a more cooperative relationship have improved substantially as New Delhi’s former insistence on strict nonalignment has given way to closer interaction with the West. In light of these considerations, the USAF was well-advised in its recent decision to engage the IAF as its next candidate for participation in bilateral Operator Engagement Talks. These and other talks should be pursued with determination at all levels, from the respective service chiefs on down the rank hierarchy, wherever there may be value-added to be gained from such interaction. To be sure, American leaders must understand and accept that the improving U.S.-Indian relationship has little chance of growing, at least in the near term, into anything approximating a more formal alignment of shared security interests. Short of that, however, closer institutional ties between the USAF and IAF are worth pursuing in any event simply because the IAF has become a world-class air force in the service of a vibrant democracy that has every likelihood of being a significant player in 21st-century regional and global security affairs.