India is critically low on fighter squadrons, they can't afford to retire MIG-21. It still has some utility for interceptions because it can fire the R-77.
Indian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter bd popeye
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So its used as a firing platform?
Ground control vectors the MIG21/Bison to the intercept. MIG then shoot the R77 in the general direction hoping the active seeker will pick it up?
It seems they also work pretty well as lawn darts.
Possibly to keep a respactable Squadron numbers.
Consider the J-7 serving in PLAAF.
India has lost 21 of Mig-21 since 2010.
China's J-7 however has about 3 crashes since 2010.
(Both aren't the same though. I'm just making a flawed comparison). Much questions can be asked about Indian MRO backing the Mig-21 fleet.
Wow!
21 Mig-21 in 10 yrs is huge.
They should retire them ASAP. I cant imagine being an Indian pilot and get told to fly this flying coffin. These high numbers of crashes demoralises the pilots
I think China manufacture J7 from scratch, while the Indian need to find refurbished parts for their aging MIG-21, so that could explain readiness and crash rates.
When your parts run low, you start to get iffy on those deadline faults just to keep from being called to the colonels office for shitty readiness stats. Indians were never known for their maintenance diligence to begin with.
Hmmm..... I wonder what their DA From 5988 looks like, of if they even bothered.
I think more likely MIG-21 would fly together with a MIG-29 or SU-30 which would act as fire control. There might even be some way of providing mid-course updates from the more advanced fighter but I'm not sure about that.
Also the Bison does have an upgraded radar set, nothing impressive but it is there: 50km range against a 3m^2 RCS.
I doubt any modern fighters in IAF are meaningfully datalinked with Mig-21 to provide fire control or mid course adjustments. India has no anti-air (S2A or A2A) CEC at the moment even in its navy let alone airforce. Outside of some communications and possibly sharing radar information (a stretch) the Mig-21s are there to make up numbers because they do still have a fair bit of airspace to cover. It's just the Bison fleet that forms the tip of the Mig-21 fleet's spear while PLAAF enjoys as much parts and support as it wants from China having long domesticised the 21 - higher operational availability and lower maintenance/parts caused crashes.
The remaining mig-21 based fighters are serviceable and no more are being bought or made anyway. Not even upgrades are bothered with. The Bison and latest J-7/F-7 variants have limited BVR if I'm not mistaken?
Indian ones got upgraded in 1990s, so they're actually BVR-capable.
Very limited BVR in terms of actual range, but still BVR.
Strictly speaking, bison is still credible enough. But they don't have anything to replace them in their role - Su-30MKI is a very different plane, and Mig-29UPGs together with first Rafales simply aren't numerous enough(the latter aren't designed and are too pricey for such use anyways).
Unfair comparison since the Indian MIGs are way older than Chinese J-7s, some of which were produced post 2010! That said, any BVR capability on the BISON is not significant. With a tiny radar like that you can’t take advantage of even the low range of R-77 missile.