What Goes Up Must Come Down... Somewhere
By Aero-News Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose"
O'Brien
It's usually bad news for a junior
officer when the commander of the whole armed service knows your
name. We visited that fact recently with the hapless Russian
fighter pilot, Valery Troyanov, who crashed in Lithuania and was
thrown in jail (He was released first to house arrest, and has
since gone home to Russia). The most recent officer to be
threatened with the "Commander in Chief's Special Projects Officer
On An Extremely Short Leash" job is an unnamed Indian Air Force
pilot, who made an impression on Air Chief Marshal S. P. Tyagi and
a glittering array of other brass.
Indeed, the impression was almost a literal one, as a heavy-drop
load of parachute cargo from the pilot's An-32 cargo plane almost
landed on the VIP reviewing stand, causing some of the brass and
most of the journalists to scatter (not, apparently, including
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov and Tyagi, who stood their
ground). The pallet landed just a dozen feet from the reviewing
stand.
Along with Ivanov and Tyagi, the threatened spectators included
Russian Ambassador Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Russian airborne troops
commander Colonel General Alexander KolmakovIvanov, Indian Army
chief Gen J J Singh, and some two dozen other generals and a
similar number of civilians and colonels.
The point of the spectacular airborne operation was to initiate
a combined Russian/Indian counterterrorist exercise, named
Indra-2005. The two nations have long been allies, and the Indian
forces often seem to be an unusual stew of British culture and
Russian hardware, with many peculiarly Indian spices.
The exercise gave the two nations airborne and naval forces a
chance to interoperate. They also were able to check certain
qualification boxes for possible combined UN peacekeeping
operations in the future. And the Russians noted that both nations
have ongoing troubles with Islamist terrorism.
Dropping things by parachute, at the mercy of the wind, remains
an inexact science, and every nation that does it is plagued by
mishaps -- strayed loads, tangled chutes, and bouncing vehicles,
supplies, and artillery pieces. Cargo chutes are generally much
less reliable than personnel chutes, and the systems for dropping
the larger loads are of necessity, more complex.
The stray Indian load included a Mahindra and Mahindra jeep
mounting the Milan anti-tank missile system, and weighed over two
tons. It was dropped from an Antonov An-32, a Ukrainian-made
twin-engine transport. Over a hundred of these medium transports
form the backbone of Indian Air Force airlift capability. The An-32
was specially developed for India by grafting much more powerful
(5,100 shp) turboprop engines onto the An-26.
Six An-32s and three Russian Il-76 jet transports took part in
the exercise; all the other cargo landed on target.
Ivanov laughed off the incident, saying that, "In a real war
situation, you would not have pavilions with VIPs and journalists.
In the event, it was a perfect drop, since the load landed neatly
concealed between two dunes. I congratulate you on that."
ACM Tyagi may not be so forgiving. He has asked for a briefing
from the pilot in question.
"Gust of wind," guy -- but any pilot who ever had to explain a
robust landing to passengers or crew will know this one. You may
still get away with it with the Air Chief Marshal, though: being a
pilot himself, he probably had recourse to the "gust of wind" at
some time in his career himself.