The air force base at Kalaikunda was originally built by the Americans (including the two satellite airfields at Kharagpur and Dudhkudi), as part of a vast network of bases for the US air force to operate from in Bengal during the Second World War, when Japanese had been bombing Kolkata, had occupied the Andamans, bombed Madras city, and besieged Imphal during its invasion of India. The US Army Air Force bombed Japan from airfields in Bengal, while the Indian Air Force gallantly defended Imphal against the Japanese invasion.

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Less than two decades later we suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese, whose leadership declared that this was to “teach lessons” to India! The defeat was made worse because the IAF was not used in combat to support the army. But because the major reasons was the concerns about our weakness in air defence of cities (like Kolkata), an air exercise called ‘Shiksha’ (meaning teaching) between Indian Air Force and the American and British air forces, was held in 1963, as part of the efforts to beef up our defences. That is how we landed up being taught lessons both by the West and its Communist adversary, China.

We have come a long way since then, even if that knowledge has not yet been acquired by some leaders of the country. Military exercises have become the normal component of international diplomacy. Our navy has conducted numerous exercises with other navies, including that of the US and now Russia. Our army has been engaged with exercises with many countries. We have actively taken part in over five dozen UN peacekeeping operations. For example, in the UN operations in Congo in 1961-62, our Canberra interdictor squadron often provided air cover to US Globemasters.

IAF exercises in the past few years have been held with the Americans, British, NATO, France, South Africa, Singapore and other countries where our air force has excelled most others and impressed them with its professional skills and capabilities. The US Air Force, in particular, suffered a rude shock last year during the exercise in the Gwalior region when, according to their own reports, they lost 74 per cent of the mock air engagements, including the rather humiliating shot taken by the much maligned MiG-21 on the US top-of-the-line F-15 fighter! One of the major reasons for the US administration’s decision to open the doors to closer cooperation has been the experience of military exercises. The US defence establishment has found a new healthy respect for India and its defence forces.

There is also the professional side of the exercises. The US Air Force has been in combat, rightly or wrongly, more often across the world than any other air force in the world for the past six decades. Pitting our air warriors in exercises against their best would help to hone our combat skills without having to adopt anything that does not suit us. Our defence forces had stood out in the long and mutually beneficial relationship with the Soviet Union without adopting Soviet doctrines and tactics that did not fit in with our own understanding of our operational environment. This is why Marshal Gorshkov — the Soviet naval chief and strategist — had made a special request to be briefed on our Soviet-made missile boat after the 1971 War, on the plea that this was the first Soviet-made warship that had won in a war!

The US Air Force is also the leader in high-technology weapons systems and their professional operational employment. It is in our interest to imbibe as much as we can and need, from practical exercises rather than only from glossy magazines of the arms manufacturers. More specifically, the Americans did not want to bring their AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) for last year’s exercises. They are doing so this year. Such systems make a profound change in air warfare tactics and outcomes; and New Delhi had had a lot of hard work to do to persuade Washington not to supply them to Pakistan in the mid-1980s. We are expected to receive our own AWACS, an Il-76 platform with an Israeli radar and our own avionics system, next year. An air exercise like the present one would help to prepare us better in absorbing the doctrine, tactics and operational procedures that we should evolve to make the best use of them.

It also needs to be noted that the Americans are employing the F-16s fighters backed by AWACS this time. It is worth remembering that Pakistan has been operating F-16s for two decades. Its air force has acquired knowledge of working with Saudi AWACS during the 1980s and later. It is planning to acquire AWACS from Sweden; and the US has agreed to supply nearly 80 F-16 aircraft to it. The Indo-US air exercises provide a unique opportunity to our air warriors to practice against this combination, while building a better relationship with the sole super power. Incidentally, the F-16 is one of the aircraft types being talked of in competition for the acquisition of 126 new fighters for the IAF; and flying against them would also be a useful opportunity to operationally evaluate it.

Surely it is not the intention of our political leaders, innocent as some may be about matters affecting national defence, to keep the country isolated from international military developments? It was this cultural trait that was at the root of the Panipat Syndrome, which not only led to our isolating ourselves from global developments in war and instruments of war but also necessitated the employment of foreign artillery experts to make and direct our guns in mediaeval times. The rest is history. The only question that we need to ask is: do we want to repeat it?

The writer, a retired air commodore, is director, Centre for Air Power Studies