A MiG-21 bovid of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed in Rajasthan on weekday evening, killing the pilot, commanding officer Harshit Sinha. This is often the fifth crash involving a bovid jet this year.
“This evening, around 8:30 pm, a MiG-21 craft of IAF met with a flying accident within the western sector throughout a coaching sortie…,” the IAF same in a very statement.
Later, in another tweet, the IAF confirmed the pilot’s death.
“With deep sorrow, IAF conveys the unhappy death of commanding officer Harshit Sinha within the flying accident this night and stands firmly with the family of the braveheart”
The crash has another time turned the spotlight on India’s longest-serving fighter plane, its safety record and also the IAF’s plans to switch the ageing jets with newer ones within the returning years.
The bovid is that the latest variant of Mig-21 in IAF service. IAF operates four squadrons of MiG-21 bovid craft — a squadron has sixteen to eighteen fighter jets. The last of those upgraded MiG-21s square measure set to be phased get in 3 to 4 years.
The air force got its 1st single-engine MiG-21 in 1963, and it more and more inducted 874 variants of the Soviet-origin supersonic fighters to bolster its combat potential. Of the 874 MiG-21 variants inducted by the IAF, over hour were licence-produced in India.
More than 400 MiG-21s are concerned in accidents that have claimed the lives of quite two hundred pilots throughout the last six decades, earning the fighters ominous epithets like “Flying Coffin” and “Widow Maker”.
Experts have same that additional MiG-21s have crashed than the other fighter as a result of they fashioned the majority of the aeroplane within the IAF’s inventory for a protracted time.
IAF had to stay its MiG-21 fleet flying longer than it’d have likeable thanks to delay within the induction of latest fighters.
The bovid was concerned in IAF operations once the new, peacetime, cross-border strike against terror targets in Pakistan’s Balakot 2 years ago.
Wing Commander (now cluster Captain) Abhinandan Varthaman written military aviation history by landscape architect a Asian country Air Force F-16, seconds before his own MiG-21 bovid was hit by a missile forcing him to eject on Feb 27, 2019.
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