Glory: IAF Flankers at dawn at Idaho!

Beauty. IAF Su-30MKIs at dawn at Idaho’s Mountain Home AFB.

According to an IAF statement today, “The contingent has, during the work up phase, flown over a hundred sorties in what can be termed as a ‘cost effective deployment’ with the team making full use of the training infrastructure made available to it. The format of the deployment followed is ‘crawl, walk & run’, a term used for systematic increase in the pace and scope of exercise and combat maneuvering. The IAF’s participating aircraft namely the Su-30 MKIs, IL-78 refuellers and the IL-76 aircraft have practiced Air defence mission, Offensive Air Operations, Large Force Engagements and Dynamic targeting. The IAF Special Force ‘GARUDS’ which also would be taking part in exercise Red Flag have practiced hostage rescue operations in urban warfare scenarios.”

The work up phase is being carried out so that the IAF contingent, which is taking part in exercise Red Flag for the first time, familiarizes itself with the flying procedures, Radio Telephony terminologies, brevity codes and other aspects of the exercise. Thus the contingent is using mountain Home AF Base to hone their skills on operating in USAF environment. For this purpose, Squadrons of USAF F-16s & F-15s are flying missions with IAF aircrafts. The challenge which the IAF team faces is to adapt itself to the complex and advanced Network centricity of USAF.

The work up phase at Mountain Home Air Force base concludes on 07 Aug 08.

Photos Courtesy IAF/USAF

12 thoughts on “Glory: IAF Flankers at dawn at Idaho!”

  1. Mahesh released four photos…where are the rest….as this the only place for press releases and sarkari pictures.

  2. My advice, dont get too cozy with the Americans.

    1. Bush calls our PM three times in a single day to back-off on the WTO issue. So serious was the issue, that the supreme court justice had to write to the PM.
    2. US pushing hard for its aircrafts on MMRCA. They will definitely use Red Flag in part as a marketing campaign.
    3. Boeing has told India that they should never export Tejas if they need their help in flight testing of the craft.
    4. US has been pushing India to vote against Iran for quite sometime now.

    Though India has not given in to any of these requests, the US attitude show very clearly. Inspite of the advantages of the nuclear deal, it will only increase the US influence on our independent foreign policy. Some consider this as India’s second biggest blunder after walking out of POK (under Nehru ji)

    btw, can someone explain the comment of anon2 without all that gaalis?

  3. Bloody choot…you anon 4…keep sucking the Americans, and you fool you should ask the explanation of anon 3 and anon 2…the gaalis are in comment 3 and 2

  4. so i believe it is anon3 with her beautiful and rich Hindi vocab again..

    if it is anon2, which I seriously doubt, my apologies.

  5. Itni saari bekar ki baatein ho rahi hain yahan…lekin breaking news no one is talking about , everyone is passing time here.

    Who is Ghazni Hakkan? There are so many vacancies existing outside .

  6. hi shiv!
    what glory do u see in our airforce operating a air-taxi service in the US? probably u mean our airforce working sholder to shoulder with them, but think beyond this neutrally………

    well the americans will say that IAF flew air defence-offence-dominance and then a bit of all together sorties a 100 times, but they didnt say that how many times their test pilots were strapped on the back seat(or probably the front seat too, in the sukhoi it doesnt make much of a sense) to get a sneak peek of the sukhois .they have done this before in the mig 29s, mirage and the su 30s also(though it seems they coudnt get enough of her). i believe for which(flying russian orgin ‘mythical’ aircraft’) the american pilots would do anything. during training many of their aircrafts are painted in russian camouflage colours just to mentally prepare the their pilots to fly against these aircraft .

    “‘cost effective deployment’ with the team making full use of the training infrastructure made available to it”- probably some pilots got bored with pokhran and kalaikunda. from the next time onwardsthe IAF should fit AC’s in pokhran, the bases near it(even in the toilets, underground bunkers), use chrome extensively in their buildings, and not to forget to put a 3 d logo of the airforce on watertanks and then drop them to their aircraft in limosines(like they are doing in mountain base), and cut the grass around kalaikunda then probobly they would make the most of it. and if it with the name IAF should name bases like Mountain base for srinagar, desert base for jaisalmer, god’s own base for a base in Kerala which AK anthony is hellbent on establishing. though the logical thing to do is to extend these bases and their firing range and to remove human occupation near importanr bases for free practice.

    and then yeah they would say fancy things about the ‘advanced Network centricity of USAF'( even now cold war era communication systems are widely used by the USAF, which the russians also have/had),trying to make the indians feel inferior and luring them to buy downgraded versions of their already inferior products. IAF will never achieve modernisation through buying equipment or collaboration, think of an india(god forbid) – pak war and both the country fighting on the F16s(both the sides thinking their versions are more advanced as their vendors are saying), or india china patroling their boders vigrously on the sukhois ( a indo china full fledged war will never happen in the near future as it would hamper development, advancement of india ,china respectively). only indigenization will help which will take long time to happen(first find money ,then find the money leaking on useless research, then fixing the leaking but by then their original plans becomes outdated)..and anyways these things(airborne network in this case) are of use when ur on an offensive role or fighting out of ur country,which india should never do, and the joint missions and the joint anti terrorist missions are all fancy, fighter jets are not used in these cases(now if the terrorists become advanced and use fighters)(though insane politicians and foriegn policy can make that happen)

    and then all this is a poly to sell their fighters to india just as anon said before.
    though, if the aircraft chosen in the MMRCA competition is chosen fairly(read without political intervention) then the F16 or the f 18 will never fly for india .
    F-16 because its outdated and ofcourse the americans would sell a downgraded version

    F 18 – because the Australian airforce( brought 24 odd of them for ground attack/strike role) had a bad experience(the media did that with news like su 30s and migs are vastly superior), and all the parameters like are maximum speed etc are low( remember the IAF is rightly nagging the LCA for these kind of issues). only rest of the contestants with new airframes and cutting edge techonology stand a chance to win. though it is a usual practice for these companies to demonstrate an advanced variant of the aircraft(which is confusing, even though the company clearly states the limits of the proposed (downgraded)variants vs the usage of the advanced variant) as the variant they propose to sell is on paper or would tailor made for the coustomer once it wins the contract by which it would be too late .

    and please dont pollute this comment box with useless personal remarks which no one, even the person to whom it is addressed is now interested. its a waste of time……….

  7. eric: i use the word “glory” merely to describe a beautiful photograph or set of photographs (i’ve used to word to describe a lot of previous “photo posts”). i don’t use the word to describe the fact that our aircraft are on american soil. there’s no big deal there, so i agree with you!

  8. shiv aroorji,plz put the arjun tank exclusive on youtube..after telecast..we have a powercut here..and i dont have a tv tuner card..

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Scroll to Top