Times of India devoted a complete page on India's recent purchases with the USA titled "Uncle SAMS: WAR-MART" this Sunday. What always amazes me, is why can't our reporters get the facts right.
Its mentioned in a graphic:
India started to buy jets from Soviet Union starting 1961. India first major deal with Britain was in 1979 for jaguar to be followed by Sea Harrier, Sea Hawks. Soon after the British the French stepped in sealing a deal for Mirage 2000 aircrafts.
The article totally neglects the fact that India operated Hunter aircrafts, one of the heroes of 1971 war, also shown in Border movie. And India operated the French Ouragon and Mystere aircrafts in the 1960s and 1950s.
Also Mystere participated in the 1965 war with distinction. And incidentally the purchase of Ouragon nicknamed toofani by IAF in the 50-60 period established India as a big purchaser in the world.
3 comments:
Indeed our reporters have reported wrong. And not nly this time, they falter most of the time. But they are not aeronautical engineers. They do limited search and have to publish article in small amount of time. So there observation might always not be technically correct but we should let it go. Shant we?
This article came on Sunday, and must have been well researched. It occupied a whole page, and still had significant errors. Any person related with defence or aerospace, can tell you the role played by gnats, hunters etc in 1965 and 1971 war, and they were not Russian.
This is one place foreign acquisition, where i expect the media not to make errors. Errors in indigenous items is routine like, "LCA project started in 1983 etc".
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