As the Fuck-up Fairy destroys India's air force, behold the trail of ruin left in its wake:
Senior Indian air force leaders are going public with their fears that the continued inability to obtain new fighter aircraft is causing the fighter force to fade away. The numbers are stark. ... Currently there are 33 squadrons and 14 of those are elderly MiG 21s and 27s that have to be retired by 2024. ...
A sound and necessary proposal to buy 126 foreign fighters is stalled because of political disputes over who to select. Corruption used to be the most likely cause but these days it’s simply political differences.
India thinks they need 42 squadrons.
India demoted Pakistan on the threat scale to focus on China as the most potent threat India has to face. This debacle of procurement is undermining the attempted pivot by making India unable to compete with a combined China-Pakistan air effort.
At the beginning of the decade, I said that this was India's most important defense decision of the decade.
The way things are going, it will be the most important decision next decade, too.
But hey, now the problem is politics rather than corruption! That will count a lot in the airspace over India, right?
Nuclear weapons don't relieve you of the need to have a good conventional military.
