Chapter 239: Wings of the Elephant
Operational Clearance Ceremony — Airavat-II (Type 90) Strategic Airlifter & Gajendra-II (Type 75) Tactical TransportHindon Air Force Station, Ghaziabad10 September 1976
The monsoon had been generous that year, and the consequence of that generosity was visible in the grass margins of Runway 09 at Hindon Air Force Station, which were an unusually deep green — the specific dark green that north Indian grass reached when it had been watered consistently for three months and which was not its natural colour but rather the colour it aspired to be. By September 10th, the rains had eased to their closing-season pattern, occasional heavy afternoon showers that cleaned the atmosphere and left the mornings brilliant and clear.
The morning of September 10th was brilliant and clear.
The ceremony platform had been constructed on the north apron, three hundred metres from the terminal building, on the hardstand that the IAF's station administration had cleared and cleaned over the previous four days. Rows of chairs facing a raised dais. A lectern with the IAF crest. Behind the platform, arranged on the hardstand with the mathematical precision that ground handling crews applied to ceremonial positioning, two aircraft.
The larger one dominated the scene in the way that large aircraft always dominated scenes — not through any quality of its design, though the design was notable, but through sheer physical presence. The Airavat-II stood fifty-three feet at the tail, its fuselage painted in the IAF's transport colour scheme with the roundel on the aft fuselage and the Indian Air Force lettering in dark blue. Its four KT-180 turbofans were visible in their underwing nacelles, the engine inlet lips catching the morning light.
The smaller aircraft — smaller in the way that a bull terrier is smaller than a Great Dane, which is to say comparatively but not absolutely — sat beside it with the distinctive configuration of a short-field-capable tactical transport: the high wing, the rear loading ramp in its closed position showing the distinctive upward sweep of the aft fuselage, the composite propellers of its twin KT-90 turboprops motionless in the morning air.
At six-forty-five in the morning, the hardstand was quiet except for the ground crews doing their final checks — fuel state confirmation, control surface inspection, cargo system function checks. The ceremony did not begin until nine. The aircraft had been here since four in the morning, flown in from the Shergill Aerospace delivery facility at Gorakhpur under ferry crews who had then turned the aircraft over to their IAF counterparts and withdrawn.
At seven-fifteen, Air Marshal Prakash Vasudev arrived in his staff car.
He was fifty-nine years old, the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Transport Command, which made this ceremony specifically his. He had been in the IAF since 1940, had flown Dakotas in Burma and Constellations on the pilgrim routes and AN-12s on the Ladakh supply runs that were the specific unglamorous hardship posting of the transport aviator — the runs where you flew into altitude and weather and terrain that the fighter pilots discussed in theoretical terms and that the transport crews lived in practical ones. He had been the officer who had, in 1974, written the original requirement specification for what became the Airavat-II and the Gajendra-II, the document that described what the IAF needed to move its equipment and personnel in the specific conditions that India's geography imposed.
He stood outside his car for a moment before going into the station headquarters building. He looked at the two aircraft on the hardstand. He had the quality of a man who had spent forty years around aircraft and who looked at them differently from people who had not — not with the aesthetic appreciation of the outsider but with the specific, technical, slightly analytical attention of someone who was assessing rather than admiring.
He thought: they look right.
He went inside.
The principals assembled in the station commander's conference room at eight o'clock for the pre-ceremony briefing.
Air Marshal Vasudev took the head of the table. To his right: Air Vice Marshal Ranjit Kumar, the Director General of Air Transport, who had been the senior IAF officer on the joint development committee for the past three years and who had spent more hours in the Shergill Aerospace simulators and test aircraft than any other uniformed officer. To Vasudev's left: Rear Admiral Krishnamurthy of the Indian Navy, whose service was taking delivery of three Gajendra-II units configured for the maritime patrol role — a role that had not been in the original requirement specification but had emerged from the Navy's observation of the aircraft's performance during the evaluation programme.
From Shergill Aerospace: the company's director of military programmes, a man named Colonel Harpreet Singh (retired), who had spent twenty-two years in the Army Signals Corps before moving to the aerospace industry and who brought to his commercial role the specific quality of former military officers who had crossed to industry — an understanding of what the customer actually needed that was sometimes more precise than the customer's own stated requirement. Beside him: the chief flight test engineer who had run the Airavat-II programme, a civilian named Bose, forty-four years old, Tamil, who had done his aeronautical engineering at IIT Madras and who had the quietly confident manner of someone who knows their aircraft completely.
From the Ministry of Defence: Joint Secretary Venkataraman, who was present in the capacity of formal ministry witness to the clearance, and who had spent the past week reviewing the final certification package.
Wing Commander Devraj Malhotra — the IAF's chief test pilot who had conducted the military evaluation — sat at the far end of the table. He was thirty-seven, thin, with the compact physical discipline of someone who had been flying combat aircraft since his mid-twenties and who had subsequently moved to test flying with the specific intellectual disposition that test flying required: not the reflexive excellence of the fighter pilot, but the analytical curiosity of someone who wanted to understand what an aircraft could do at every point in its operating envelope, including the points where the envelope ended.
Vasudev said: "We are here to grant operational clearance to two aircraft. I want to take fifteen minutes to ensure that every person in this room understands precisely what operational clearance means and what it does not mean, because I have been in the IAF long enough to have seen clearance ceremonies where the understanding was incomplete."
He looked around the room.
He said: "Operational clearance means that the aircraft has been evaluated against its requirement specification, has met or exceeded the performance requirements in that specification, has passed all airworthiness certification requirements under the relevant standards, and has been assessed by the military evaluation team as suitable for introduction into service. It means the aircraft is ready to fly operational missions. It does not mean the aircraft is perfect. No aircraft is perfect on the day of its clearance. Every aircraft in service has ongoing airworthiness management, ongoing modification programmes, ongoing learning from operational experience. Operational clearance is not the end of the development relationship between the manufacturer and the operator. It is the beginning of the operational relationship."
He turned to Bose.
"The certification package," he said. "Give me the summary."
Bose opened his folder.
He said: "The Airavat-II Type 90 has completed the following certification programme: structural loads testing — static and fatigue — covering the full flight envelope plus twenty percent. Propulsion certification for four KT-180 turbofans, including single-engine and two-engine inoperative performance validation. Avionics certification including the deep-interdiction navigation system, which has been certified against the stated requirement for independent operation in denied-navigation environments. Airdrop system certification — personnel, cargo, heavy equipment including armoured vehicles — at altitudes from sea level to twenty-three thousand feet. Pressurisation and environmental control system certification for sustained high-altitude cruise. Military utility assessment — cargo loading and lashing, rapid turnaround procedures, compatibility with IAF ground handling equipment."
He turned to the Gajendra-II section.
"The Gajendra-II Type 75 has completed: structural certification for the short-field operating envelope, including repeated operations from surfaces down to Class One unprepared strips. Propulsion certification for twin KT-90 turboprops including asymmetric power validation. Composite propeller certification — this required an extended fatigue programme because the composite construction was a new feature of the propulsion system and required empirical validation of the life model. The composite scimitar propellers and composite trawling propellers have been individually certified and the propeller system as a whole has been validated. STOL performance validation: the demonstrated take-off distance over fifty feet is within eight percent of the design specification, which is within the acceptable tolerance. Tactical systems certification including the rear-loading ramp in flight configuration, the roller cargo system, and the personnel door systems."
Vasudev said: "The propeller certification. The composite was the longest-running item on the certification schedule."
Bose said: "Yes, sir. The theoretical fatigue model for the composite propeller predicted a specific delamination mode under sustained high-cycle loading that we were not confident we had characterized correctly from the static testing. The extended fatigue programme ran the propellers for eight thousand additional cycles beyond the standard requirement. The mode appeared at cycle count approximately forty percent lower than the model predicted, which was a concern, but the failure mode was entirely benign — a surface delamination at the tip region that had no structural consequence and was visible to routine inspection. We revised the inspection interval from the initial recommendation. The revised interval is conservative. The Navy concurred with the revision."
Rear Admiral Krishnamurthy said: "The maritime patrol configuration has an additional propeller requirement because the loiter profile places the propulsion system in a different power regime than the tactical transport profile. The Navy's acceptance was conditional on the loiter-profile fatigue validation, which was completed in July."
Vasudev said: "The documentation is clean on this?"
Krishnamurthy said: "The documentation is complete."
Malhotra was looking at the ceiling. He had the specific quality of a test pilot who has been in certification meetings many times and who has learned to distinguish between the discussions that required his input and the discussions that could proceed without it. He was waiting for the discussion that required his input.
Vasudev said: "Wing Commander Malhotra. Your assessment."
Malhotra looked down from the ceiling.
He said: "I'll begin with the Gajendra-II because it's the aircraft that surprised me more, which is the more interesting story."
He said: "The Gajendra-II's design specification called for a tactical STOL transport with high-wing configuration, rear-loading ramp, and ability to operate from unprepared strips of Class One standard. I have flown the An-32 and the C-130 in similar roles for comparative baseline. The Gajendra-II is not the same aircraft as either of those, and I mean that precisely — it is not simply a domestic equivalent with similar numbers. The handling in the short-field regime is different in a way that I did not expect."
He paused.
He said: "In short-field operations, the conventional turboprop transport's critical limitation is power-to-weight ratio in the go-around case — the case where you are close to the ground at low speed and need to climb urgently. The Gajendra-II's KT-90 engines have a contingency power rating that produces significantly higher thrust than the continuous rating, available for go-around and emergency cases, and the engine management system hands the pilot the contingency rating automatically at the appropriate throttle position without requiring a separate selection. In practice, what this means is that the go-around from a short-field approach in the Gajendra-II is more predictable and more accessible than in any comparable aircraft I have flown. The margin in that critical case is larger."
Harpreet Singh made a note.
Malhotra said: "The critical limitation in the Gajendra-II is different from what I expected. It is not the take-off or landing performance — that is better than specified. The critical limitation is the lateral handling in crosswind conditions on unprepared strips. The composite propellers produce a propeller wake that interacts with the fin in crosswinds in a way that is not dangerous but requires pilot awareness. I gave this specific handling characteristic to the conversion training team and it is in the conversion notes."
He said: "The Airavat-II. This is India's first large military airlifter and I want to say something about that before I describe the evaluation results."
The room was quiet.
Malhotra said: "I have flown the Il-76. I have flown the C-141 on the exchange programme at Edwards. I have flown an An-12 for twelve years as an operational pilot. The Airavat-II is in the same category as the Il-76 and the C-141. It is not in the same category as the An-12, which is what we have been using in the heavy lift role." He paused. "I say this not to praise the manufacturer — that is not my role — but to establish the baseline for what the IAF is receiving today. We are receiving an aircraft that is the peer of the best military airlifters currently in service in any air force in the world. The payload capacity, the range with maximum payload, the operational ceiling, the airdrop capability — all are in the class that is currently associated with the superpowers' strategic airlift assets."
He looked at Bose.
He said: "The deep-interdiction navigation system. Tell me I am right about what it means."
Bose said: "The deep-interdiction navigation system uses inertial navigation as the primary system, with a stellar reference capability for long-duration flights to correct inertial drift. The system allows the Airavat-II to navigate to a destination point without any external navigation aids — no radio beacons, no radar transponder guidance, no NDB, no VOR — with a position accuracy that meets the airdrop delivery requirement at the destination. In a scenario where external navigation infrastructure is unavailable or denied, the Airavat-II can still deliver cargo and personnel to an accurate delivery point."
Vasudev said: "Why does that matter?"
Bose looked at him. He understood that the question was not a request for information — Vasudev knew exactly why it mattered. The question was a request for the answer to be stated clearly in the presence of the full group.
He said: "In a conflict scenario where the adversary is active in the electronic environment — jamming, deception, denial of navigation services — conventional transport aircraft are significantly degraded. They can fly, but they cannot navigate accurately to a specific point for airdrop or airland delivery. They are dependent on the navigation infrastructure that the adversary is trying to degrade. The Airavat-II with the deep-interdiction navigation system is not dependent on that infrastructure. It can deliver to a remote drop zone on a dark night, in denied airspace, to within the accuracy the special operations teams require." He paused. "This is a capability that very few countries have in their transport force. The United States has it. The Soviet Union has it. India now has it."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Then Rear Admiral Krishnamurthy said: "I want to state for the record that the Navy's requirement for the Gajendra-II in the maritime patrol configuration does not include the deep-interdiction navigation system, which is a land forces requirement. The Navy's navigation requirement is different and is addressed by the maritime patrol avionics suite, which is also certified. I mention this not as a limitation but as a clarification — the two aircraft in the maritime patrol role are configured differently from the tactical transport role and the clearance covers both configurations."
Vasudev said: "The record notes that. Anything else from the floor before we proceed?"
Venkataraman from the Ministry said: "The contract delivery schedule. The clearance today covers the initial production batch. What is the delivery timeline?"
Harpreet Singh said: "The production contract covers twenty-four Airavat-II and eighteen Gajendra-II in the initial batch. The Airavat-II delivery schedule: six aircraft per year over four years. First six aircraft are ready for delivery today — they have been at the production facility awaiting this clearance. The Gajendra-II schedule: six per year for three years. First six units are similarly ready."
Vasudev said: "Six Airavat-IIs today."
Harpreet Singh said: "Six Airavat-IIs today. Three Gajendra-IIs today, three additional Gajendra-IIs designated for naval delivery to be ferried to INS Hansa within the week upon Navy's acceptance today."
Vasudev stood.
He said: "We proceed to the ceremony."
The hardstand at nine o'clock was different from the hardstand at six-forty-five.
The chairs were filled. The assembled personnel included the station's uniformed staff — the transport squadrons represented in formation, two hundred and twenty men and women in pressed blues, standing in the specific way that Indian military personnel stood at ceremonies, the specific quality of collective attention that formation drill produced. There were officers from the Army's air operations cells, who were among the primary users of what the Gajendra-II would do — the men who planned the parachute drops and the airland assaults and the resupply operations into forward areas that tactical transport aircraft enabled. There were naval officers from Western and Eastern Naval Commands, there specifically because the Gajendra-II's maritime patrol variant was going to the Navy and the Navy had sent its own people to receive its own aircraft. There were journalists — a small, selected group from the defence correspondents' pool, no foreign press — and a limited number of official guests from the Ministry.
What there were not, notably, were politicians. This was not an oversight. It was a policy decision that Vasudev had made and communicated to the Ministry three weeks earlier: the Airavat-II and Gajendra-II were being introduced into IAF service, and the ceremony was an IAF operational event. The aircraft had been developed with government support. The government would be acknowledged. But the ceremony was not a political occasion.
The Ministry had accepted this without objection, which was itself a measure of something about the current government's relationship with the military that the senior officers present recognized and appreciated.
Vasudev approached the lectern.
The formation behind him was perfectly still. The two aircraft behind the dais were lit by the September morning sun from the east, the Airavat-II's four-engine configuration appearing to expand as the light increased, the Gajendra-II's high wing throwing a shadow across the hardstand that moved slightly as the light shifted.
Vasudev had written his remarks himself, without an aide, the previous evening. He had written them on a single side of paper in his characteristic handwriting — compressed, readable, the handwriting of someone who wrote quickly and legibly because forty years of operational flying had conditioned every physical action toward efficiency.
He did not read from the paper. He had read it enough times that he knew it.
He said: "September 10th, 1976. India gains two aircraft today."
He said it simply, without the rhetorical scaffolding that such moments usually accumulated. The assembled personnel, who had heard many such ceremonies, heard the simplicity and paid attention.
He said: "I want to describe what those two aircraft are, precisely, before I describe what they mean."
He said: "The Airavat-II Type 90 is a four-engine turbofan strategic airlifter capable of carrying one hundred and ten tonnes over long range, or seventy-five to eighty tonnes with full military payload, to any airfield on the subcontinent and beyond. It is cleared for paratroop delivery, heavy equipment airdrop including armoured vehicles, and combat vehicle airland operations. It carries the deep-interdiction navigation system, which allows it to reach a specific delivery point without external navigation assistance." He paused. "The Airavat-II is, by any current international standard, a strategic airlifter. Not a regional airlifter. Not a medium airlifter. A strategic airlifter. There are five aircraft in service in the world today that meet this definition. Three belong to the United States. One belongs to the Soviet Union. One belongs to India."
A brief, complete silence.
He continued: "The Gajendra-II Type 75 is a twin-engine turboprop tactical STOL transport capable of carrying twenty to twenty-five tonnes from unprepared strips of Class One standard — strips that are, in practice, the kind of strips that exist in forward areas, in mountains, in river valleys, in the places where conventional transport aircraft cannot operate. The Gajendra-II can take off in under eight hundred metres over fifty feet. It can land in similar distance. It can operate from high-altitude strips — we have evaluated it at Daulat Beg Oldie — and it can operate from maritime patrol profiles over the ocean." He paused. "The Gajendra-II does something that the Indian Air Force has not previously been able to do. It allows us to reach the places that our geography says are unreachable."
He said: "I want to talk about what India's geography says."
He had been thinking about this section of the remarks for three days. He was fifty-nine years old and had spent his career flying in and around the specific terrain that India's geography presented.
He said: "Uttar Pradesh shares a border with Nepal. The Himalayan states share borders with China. Jammu and Kashmir shares borders with Pakistan. The northeastern states share borders with China, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. The coastline is seven thousand kilometres. The island territories extend into the Indian Ocean." He paused. "The Indian Air Force's obligation is to be able to reach anywhere within this geography that the nation requires. Not the reachable parts. Anywhere." He paused. "Until today, our ability to reach the difficult parts — the high-altitude forward areas, the remote island territories, the valley strips, the maritime surveillance areas — has depended on aircraft that were designed by other nations for other geographies. We have adapted those aircraft to our requirements with great skill and great dedication, and our crews have done things with foreign aircraft that those aircraft were not designed to do." He paused. "Today, the aircraft are Indian. They were designed for this geography, by engineers who grew up under this sky. The requirements were written by operators who have spent careers navigating this terrain. The aircraft that you see on this hardstand were built for the specific conditions of India's strategic environment, not adapted to them."
He looked at the two aircraft.
He said: "The Airavat-II carries the name of a being from Indian tradition — the celestial elephant, the mount of Indra, the carrier of great weight across vast distances. The name is appropriate. We asked Shergill Aerospace to build us an aircraft capable of carrying great weight across vast distances. They built the Airavat-II." He paused. "The Gajendra-II carries the name of the elephant who reached the shore — the elephant in the ancient story who, though seized and pulled down, reached safety by calling out for assistance, and who was lifted from danger by divine intervention at the moment of greatest extremity. The name is appropriate also. The Gajendra-II is the aircraft that reaches the shore — the aircraft that can reach the forward positions at the moment of greatest need, in the terrain and conditions where no other aircraft can go." He paused. "The names were chosen by the operators, not by the manufacturer. That is as it should be."
He said: "I want to say something about the men and women who flew these aircraft during the evaluation."
He named them. All twelve of the IAF pilots who had flown the Airavat-II during the military evaluation. All eight who had flown the Gajendra-II. He named their ranks and their posting stations and their previous aircraft types. He named the loadmasters and the flight engineers and the ground crew chiefs who had worked the aircraft during the evaluation period.
He said: "Wing Commander Malhotra led the evaluation team. I want to speak specifically about one moment in the evaluation, because it is the moment I would want recorded if I were writing the history of this programme, and if no one else writes it, I will."
The assembled personnel were very still.
He said: "On March 14th of this year, the Airavat-II conducted its first heavy equipment airdrop at altitude — a combat vehicle at fifteen thousand feet over a designated drop zone in Rajasthan. This was the first airdrop of a combat vehicle by an Indian aircraft from an Indian aircraft. It is an event that required ten years of equipment development, three years of aircraft development, two years of evaluation, and the specific skill of the crew that flew the aircraft on March 14th." He looked at Malhotra. "Wing Commander Malhotra was the aircraft commander on that sortie. The drop was accurate to within the specified circular error probable. The aircraft performed as designed. The crew performed as trained." He paused. "That is the kind of sentence that appears in evaluation reports and is then forgotten. I do not want it to be forgotten."
He turned back to the assembled formation.
He said: "The Indian Air Force today accepts into operational service the Airavat-II and the Gajendra-II. We accept them with the full understanding of what they represent — not only as aircraft, but as the beginning of a capability that we are building rather than buying. These aircraft will have successors. Those successors will be better because these aircraft exist and because the men and women of the IAF will operate them, learn from them, and tell the engineers what the next generation needs to be." He paused. "The relationship between the operator and the manufacturer, in the Indian aerospace programme, is not a procurement relationship. It is a development relationship. We tell the engineers what we need. The engineers build it. We fly it. We learn what works and what needs improvement. We tell the engineers. They build the improvement. Over years, over decades, the aircraft get better and the operators get better and the country gets the capability it needs." He paused. "That process begins today, with these aircraft, on this hardstand."
He said: "I have one more thing to say."
He said: "The men and women standing in formation behind me, and the men and women who flew the aircraft during the evaluation, and the men and women who will fly these aircraft in operations — they are the people who translate a design specification into a national capability. The engineers design the aircraft. The officers grant the clearance. The government provides the resources. But the capability belongs to the people who fly the aircraft, and the people who fly the aircraft are these people." He looked at the formation. "You are the reason these aircraft exist. They exist to serve you. You exist to serve India."
He said: "That is all."
He stepped back from the lectern.
The clearance signing took place at a table that had been placed to the left of the dais, away from the ceremonial centre, because Vasudev had specified that the signing was an administrative event and not a theatrical one. Three copies of the Operational Clearance Certificate for each aircraft: one for Transport Command, one for the Ministry, one for Shergill Aerospace. The certificates were signed by Vasudev for the IAF and by Harpreet Singh for Shergill Aerospace, with Venkataraman signing as ministry witness.
The naval clearance — a separate instrument, covering the maritime patrol configuration — was signed by Rear Admiral Krishnamurthy and countersigned by Harpreet Singh and Venkataraman.
The signing took six minutes.
After the signing, the ceremony moved to the static display.
The static display was not choreographed. Vasudev had specifically declined to choreograph it. The assembled personnel were told: the aircraft are open for inspection. Go and look at what we have taken delivery of.
What followed was something that no air force protocol manual described, because it was not a protocol event. It was several hundred people, uniformed and civilian, walking through and around two aircraft that they had heard about and read about and been briefed on for two years and were now, for the first time, physically present with.
The Airavat-II's cargo deck was open — the rear ramp lowered, the main cargo door hinged back, the full interior of the aircraft accessible. The cargo deck was one hundred and forty feet long and nineteen feet wide, the dimensions of it becoming comprehensible only when you stood inside it and looked toward the flight deck door. It could hold fifteen infantry combat vehicles. It could hold one hundred and fifty fully equipped paratroopers. It could hold, in the humanitarian airlift configuration, medical equipment for a forward surgical hospital.
The flight crew of the Airavat-II — the four-person crew who had ferried the aircraft in from Gorakhpur that morning — were on the flight deck and were talking to the officers who climbed up through the crew entry door to look at the cockpit. The cockpit had the specific organization of a modern military airlifter: six primary display panels, the autopilot and flight management system panel, the deep-interdiction navigation system display, the cargo system management panel. It was not the cockpit of an An-12, which was what most of the IAF transport officers had spent their careers with. It was more complex in the systems sense and simpler in the ergonomics sense — the information organization had been designed specifically to reduce crew workload in the high-density operational phases.
An Air Force major, who had spent twelve years on the An-12 and who had been involved in the Airavat-II's payload capacity evaluation during the programme, climbed into the left seat and looked at the panel for a long time without speaking.
The ferry crew's aircraft commander — a Shergill Aerospace pilot who had done the route several times and who had the relaxed familiarity of someone at home in a cockpit he had accumulated significant hours in — said: "Different from the An-12."
The major said: "Yes." He looked at the navigation system display. "This is the stellar reference system?"
"That's the readout, yes. The stellar sensor is on the upper fuselage — retractable, deploys for night or high-altitude operation. The system uses a star fix to update the inertial platform. In practice, in a long-duration flight, the fix is taken automatically every thirty minutes."
The major said: "We flew in denied environments on the An-12. We used dead reckoning."
"Dead reckoning works," the ferry pilot said. "This works better."
The major said: "I know." He ran his hand along the centre console without touching the controls, the habit of a pilot who was not at the controls and knew he was not. "The contingency power setting. What does it feel like in the airdrop run?"
The ferry pilot said: "The run-in is like any other turbofan transport. Heavy. Accurate. In the airdrop window, the aircraft is stable — more stable than I expected, given the high wing loading. After the drop, the contingency power comes in clean. No yaw excursion."
The major was quiet for a moment.
He said: "When is the conversion course?"
The ferry pilot said: "The first IAF conversion course begins in November. Your name is on the list."
The major looked at the panel again.
He said: "Good."
He climbed down from the left seat and let the next officer up.
The Gajendra-II had gathered a different crowd.
The Army officers — the men from the air operations cells and the parachute brigade liaison team who had been involved in the tactical transport requirement definition — were around the Gajendra-II in the specific way of people who are looking at something they have described in writing and are now seeing rendered in physical form. The experience of having written a requirement and then encountered the thing that the requirement produced was not always satisfying — requirements described needs and aircraft met them or did not meet them in various degrees. The Gajendra-II had met the requirement. The men who had written parts of the requirement were looking at the aircraft with the particular satisfaction of people who had asked for something and received it.
The rear ramp was open. The cargo hold was smaller than the Airavat-II's in the way that all tactical transports were smaller than strategic ones, but the specific organization of the hold was what the Army officers were examining most carefully. The roller cargo system — the tracks in the floor that allowed cargo to be moved and positioned without manual lifting — was the system that the parachute brigade's loadmaster team had spent two weeks evaluating. The loadmaster team's senior NCO, a havildar named Chandra Singh who had been loading aircraft for fifteen years and who was not easily impressed, had written in his evaluation report: The roller system works as described. The attachment points for the heavy platform loads are at the correct spacing. The ramp angle in the full-down position allows ground equipment to be driven directly into the hold without a ramp adapter. This was the specific note that the Shergill Aerospace cargo systems engineers had been most gratified to receive, because the ramp angle had been the subject of three design iterations and the third iteration had produced something that the havildar described as working as described.
Chandra Singh was on the ramp now, showing an Army captain the attachment point geometry.
He said: "The platform loads. The attachment here and here. Four points for the combat vehicle platform. The load spreader goes here." He pointed. "In the current design, the load spreader is a separate item that the crew provides. My recommendation to the evaluation team was that the spreader should be stowed onboard in a designated rack. It is not there now. The recommendation is noted." He paused. "It will be there in the next modification."
The captain said: "When does this aircraft reach forward strips?"
Chandra Singh said: "The first operational squadron is forming at Bagdogra. The forward strip evaluations are scheduled for November — Daulat Beg Oldie, Nyoma, Kargil. The crews will do their strip evaluations and we will have operational clearance for specific forward strips by January."
The captain said: "January."
"January," Chandra Singh confirmed. "After January, if the strip is in the cleared list, the aircraft goes there."
He said it with the flat certainty of a man who had been involved in the evaluation and who had the specific confidence of knowing that the aircraft did what it had been certified to do.
Malhotra was standing beside the Airavat-II's nose gear, not looking at the aircraft. He was looking at the mountains — not the actual mountains, which were two hundred kilometres away, but the direction of them, the specific northwest direction where the Himalayan range ran.
He had been a test pilot for six years. Before that, he had been a transport pilot on the An-12, doing the runs that Vasudev had described — Ladakh, the high-altitude strips, the specific business of moving things to places that were difficult to reach. He understood, from that operational experience, what the difference between the Airavat-II and the An-12 meant in practical terms. Not the numbers — he had written the numbers in the evaluation report. The experience.
He had flown the Airavat-II on the night sortie in February, which was not in any of the formal evaluation documentation because it was technically a development sortie rather than an evaluation sortie. He had taken the aircraft out of Agra at two in the morning, over Rajasthan, at thirty-two thousand feet, with the deep-interdiction navigation system running in its autonomous mode — all external navigation references turned off, the aircraft navigating on the stellar-updated inertial platform alone, flying a programmed route to a designated point and back. He had sat in the left seat in the dark over Rajasthan and watched the navigation display and had thought, somewhere around four in the morning, that what he was doing was something that had not been done before in an Indian aircraft.
Not in any Indian aircraft. Not with any Indian crew.
The aircraft had hit the programmed waypoints to within the specified accuracy. The stellar updates had kept the inertial platform tight. When he turned on the ground mapping radar — which was not part of the autonomous navigation system but which provided an independent check — the correlation between the radar picture and the navigation display had been essentially perfect.
He had landed at Agra at five-thirty and sat in the debrief room and written his notes and thought: we have this capability now.
Now, standing beside the nose gear on September 10th, he was thinking about what that capability meant in operational terms — not the evaluation terms, where the question was whether the aircraft met the specification, but the operational terms, where the question was what a commander could do with this aircraft that they could not do before.
The answer involved nights and weather and contested airspace and the specific forward areas that were the subject of Indian military planning without being the subject of public discussion. The answer was classified, and Malhotra was not in the habit of thinking classified thoughts in public places.
He was thinking them anyway. Because the aircraft was here, and it was real, and it was his service's, and what it could do was now a function of the crews who would fly it and the commanders who would send it.
He hoped they would use it well.
The lunch after the ceremony was held in the officers' mess at the station — the long table in the formal dining room, the stewards, the specific formality of mess dining that IAF stations maintained because the mess was where the service's institutional culture was most directly expressed.
Vasudev sat at the head. To his right: Malhotra. To his left: Rear Admiral Krishnamurthy. The table filled in with the senior officers from both services, the Shergill Aerospace representatives, the Ministry officials.
The mess steward served the first course and the conversation subdivided into the smaller conversations that mess dining always produced — different threads running simultaneously, occasionally intersecting, the way of a room full of people who have many things to say to specific other people and who are taking advantage of the occasion to say them.
Harpreet Singh was talking to Malhotra about the conversion programme.
He said: "The simulator is ready. We shipped it to the OTU last week. The full motion simulator, not the partial-task trainer — the Airavat-II sim has the cargo management and nav systems integration, so crews can practise the full mission profile."
Malhotra said: "The airdrop simulations. How close are they?"
Harpreet Singh said: "We can simulate any airdrop scenario up to the maximum platform weight. The cargo bay is modelled — the shift in the centre of gravity as the load goes out the ramp is modelled, the control response that the crew experiences in the actual aircraft is reproduced in the sim." He paused. "The only thing the sim can't reproduce is the noise. The actual aircraft when the ramp opens and the platform goes — it's a specific sensation. I've done it. The sim is quiet by comparison."
Malhotra said: "Crews will do the first real drops during conversion. Six qualification drops minimum before operational certification."
"That's the curriculum," Harpreet Singh confirmed.
At the other end of the table, Bose was talking to the Army captain who had been examining the Gajendra-II's cargo system.
The captain said: "The short-field performance. The evaluated strip at Nyoma — you did it in November, the winter."
Bose said: "Yes. The density altitude at Nyoma in November is significant — you are already at fourteen thousand feet and the temperature in November is below freezing, which actually helps somewhat with air density but not as much as you'd want. The aircraft came off the strip in the evaluated distance, which was within eight percent of the design spec as Malhotra reported. But the margin over the obstacles on the departure end was tighter than I would have liked."
The captain said: "Tighter than specified?"
Bose said: "Within specification. But specification is a minimum, not a comfortable margin. I raised this with the propulsion team. The current engines are the KT-90. The next variant, which is in the design phase, will have the KT-90A with a higher contingency power rating. The KT-90A changes the high-altitude short-field departure significantly."
The captain said: "When?"
Bose said: "The KT-90A certification is 1978. The Gajendra-II with KT-90A engines is the second production batch, beginning 1979."
The captain said: "We need the aircraft now, not in 1979."
Bose said: "Yes. And the aircraft you have now can do what we certified it to do. I'm not describing a limitation that prevents operations. I'm describing the room for improvement that the development programme is addressing." He paused. "Every aircraft in service has a development programme running alongside it. The difference between this aircraft and an aircraft we bought from abroad is that when the improvement is designed, the design will respond to what Indian operators identify as the improvement needed."
The captain considered this.
He said: "The tighter margin at Nyoma. I'm putting that in my operational assessment."
Bose said: "Good. That is exactly what should happen."
After lunch, before the formal dispersal, there was a brief event that had not been on the official programme.
It had been organized by the station's senior NCO, Havildar Chandra Singh, with the informal agreement of Air Marshal Vasudev, who had been told about it two days earlier and had said: do it.
The station's ground crew — the people who had, over the past week, positioned and prepared the two aircraft for the ceremony — were assembled on the hardstand at two o'clock. Not in formation. In a loose group around the nose of the Airavat-II. Approximately forty people: fuel technicians, avionics technicians, airframe technicians, the loadmaster team, the signals crew, the operations room staff.
Vasudev came out of the mess and walked to the hardstand and stood in front of the forty people.
He said: "I said in my remarks this morning that the capability belongs to the people who fly the aircraft. That was not complete." He paused. "The capability belongs to the people who fly the aircraft and the people who make the aircraft ready to fly. You are those people." He paused. "The Airavat-II and the Gajendra-II are in service. They will fly their first operational missions when their crews are qualified. When those aircraft fly, and when they carry what they need to carry to where it needs to go, the fact that they are able to do so will be the result of what you do to them before each flight. The ten minutes in the air is possible because of the ten hours on the ground." He paused. "That is not a small thing. It is the thing."
He stood with them for a moment.
Then he said: "Dismissed. You've earned the afternoon."
The forty people dispersed — back to the maintenance hangar, back to the operations room, back to the various routines of a working air force station that did not stop for ceremonies.
The two aircraft remained on the hardstand. They would remain until the evening ferry flights — the IAF crews who had completed their familiarization of the aircraft during the static display would fly both aircraft to their initial basing locations. The Airavat-II to Agra, which would serve as the home of the new Transport Squadron that was forming. The three Gajendra-IIs to Bagdogra, where the tactical transport squadron was forming. The three Navy Gajendra-IIs to INS Hansa, where the maritime patrol conversion would begin.
Malhotra stood at the edge of the hardstand at three-thirty, watching the ground crews prepare the aircraft for the evening ferry flights. He had one more thing to do before he left for Delhi. He had the evaluation debrief with the aircraft manufacturer's engineers — the final formal debrief, the one where the evaluation team's assessment was conveyed in full to the design team so that the lessons could be incorporated into the development programme going forward.
He had done these debriefs before, on other programmes, and he had developed a specific format for them that was different from the bureaucratic format that the official process specified.
He began the debrief, in the conference room that the station had made available, with the same question he always asked at the beginning.
He said: "The one thing you got most right. Tell me what it was and tell me how you got it right."
The engineers — Bose was there, and the structures lead, and the propulsion lead, and the cargo systems lead, and the avionics lead — looked at each other. This was not the format they had prepared for.
Bose said: "The deep-interdiction navigation system. We got it right because we started with the operator's actual operational requirement rather than with what was technically available. The first draft of the navigation system specification was written by Wing Commander Malhotra's predecessor on the evaluation team, and it described what a night airdrop in denied airspace actually needed — which was different from what a generic navigation system provided. We designed to that requirement rather than offering a generic system and calling it sufficient."
Malhotra said: "Good. Now tell me the one thing you got least right."
Another exchange of glances.
The cargo systems lead — a young woman engineer who had been largely quiet during the post-ceremony discussions — said: "The cargo restraint documentation. The restraint tables — the maximum loads for each attachment point, the correct restraint configurations for different cargo types — these were written by our cargo systems team who are excellent engineers but who have not loaded military cargo in operational conditions. The documentation is technically correct. It is not written in the way that a loadmaster who is doing a turnaround in a forward strip at night in a hurry actually uses it. The havildar told me this directly. He said: the data is right but the format is wrong."
Malhotra said: "Yes. He told me the same thing."
The engineer said: "We are revising the documentation format. The revision is written in collaboration with the IAF loadmaster team. It will be distributed before the first operational sorties."
Malhotra said: "Good. That is the correct response to the correct problem."
He said: "I want to tell you something that is not in the evaluation report because evaluation reports are about whether the aircraft meets the specification. This is about something else."
The engineers waited.
He said: "I have been flying for eighteen years. I flew the Dakota when I was a student pilot. I flew the An-12 for twelve years operationally. I flew the Il-76 on the exchange programme. I have now flown the Airavat-II." He paused. "The Airavat-II is the first aircraft I have flown that was built by people who understood what I needed it to do. The An-12 was built by Antonov to meet Soviet requirements. The Il-76 was built by Ilyushin for Soviet operations. They were adapted for Indian use. The Airavat-II was designed for Indian use." He paused. "I am telling you this not to compliment your engineering, though the engineering deserves a compliment. I am telling you because I want you to know what the difference feels like from the seat."
The engineers were quiet.
Then Bose said: "What does it feel like?"
Malhotra said: "It feels like the aircraft is trying to help me do my job. Rather than trying to do a job for which it was designed by people who didn't know my job."
He stood up.
He said: "The next programme. The Airavat-III. When that requirement comes, come to us early. Don't wait for the formal specification. Come to us before the specification, when you are deciding what questions the specification should ask. That's when the conversation is most useful."
Bose said: "We'll be there."
Malhotra said: "Good."
He picked up his briefcase and left the conference room and walked out into the September afternoon, which was still brilliant, the monsoon's last generosity holding into the evening, the grass on the runway margins still deeply green.
He walked to the hardstand. The two aircraft were still there, the ground crews completing their pre-ferry checks. The Airavat-II's engines would start in forty minutes for the Agra ferry.
He stood for a moment and looked at the aircraft.
He thought about the night in February. Thirty-two thousand feet over Rajasthan. The navigation display accurate to within the specification. The stars above the aircraft — the actual stars, which the stellar sensor was using, which were the same stars that Indian navigators had used for three thousand years to find their way.
He thought: we found our way.
He went to his car.
At five-fifteen in the afternoon, the Airavat-II's four KT-180 turbofans started in sequence — the high-pitched initiating whine of the first engine, then the second, then the third, then the fourth, each one building through the characteristic turbofan start signature to the settled roar of idle thrust. The sound changed the atmosphere of the station in the way that jet engines at start-up changed atmospheres — a bass frequency that was felt in the chest rather than heard with the ears, announcing the imminence of departure.
The ferry crew completed their before-taxi checks. The aircraft commander — the senior of the two IAF pilots who had done the familiarization during the static display, a Group Captain who was the incoming commander of the new transport squadron — ran through the checklist in the sequence that every transport crew ran through, the specific rhythm of verification that preceded every flight.
The ground crew chief stood at the nose, in radio contact with the cockpit, ready to marshal the aircraft out of its parking position.
The aircraft moved.
Slowly at first, the specific deliberate movement of a very large aircraft clearing its parking position, the nose wheel steering turning the aircraft toward the taxiway, the thrust from four engines producing the power to move one hundred and ninety tonnes of aircraft and fuel toward the runway.
The ground crew chief watched it go.
He had been ground crew at Hindon for eleven years. He had watched many aircraft depart from this station — AN-12s, HS-748s, the odd visiting Il-76. He watched the Airavat-II reach the taxiway and turn.
It was larger than anything he had routinely worked with.
It was also, and this was not something he would have expected himself to think, more elegant. Not in the ornamental sense — it was not an ornamental aircraft. In the functional sense. It was proportioned correctly for what it was. The relationship between the wing and the fuselage, between the engine nacelles and the wing, between the tail assembly and the fuselage — it had the quality that good engineering had when the engineering was right, which was the quality of something that looked as though it could not have been any other way.
He watched the aircraft reach the threshold of Runway 09, the engines spooling up for the power check, and he thought: that is our aircraft.
Not the IAF's aircraft, specifically, though it was that. Not India's aircraft, specifically, though it was that too. Our aircraft. The specific first-person plural of a people who had built something for themselves rather than bought something from someone else.
He thought: that is ours.
The Airavat-II held the power check for thirty seconds. The engines settled. The aircraft began to roll.
At two hundred knots it lifted off Runway 09 of Hindon Air Force Station and climbed toward the northwest, its four turbofans in their productive roar, its deep-interdiction navigation system already tracking its position against the inertial platform, the aircraft's weight decreasing with every kilogram of fuel consumed, its altitude increasing with every second of climb.
At ten thousand feet it turned west toward Agra.
The Gajendra-II departed twelve minutes later, taking the opposite heading — east toward Bagdogra, the beginning of its operational life in the mountains.
End of Chapter 239
Aircraft Technical Summary — September 10, 1976
Airavat-II (Type 90) — Strategic Airlifter TitanManufacturer: Shergill Aerospace, GorakhpurDesignation: Type 90 Strategic AirliftRole: Long-Range Strategic Transport, Heavy Airdrop, Special Operations SupportPowerplant: 4 × KT-180 TurbofansPayload capacity: 110 tonnes maximum / 75-80 tonnes with full military payloadCargo deck: 140 feet × 19 feetRange: Long-range trans-continental with full military payloadNavigation: Deep-Interdiction Navigation System (stellar-updated inertial, all-weather independent operation)Certified capabilities: Personnel airdrop, heavy equipment airdrop (including armoured vehicles), airland operations, long-range ferryFirst unit delivery: 6 aircraft, 10 September 1976Initial basing: Air Force Station AgraInitial production batch: 24 aircraft
Gajendra-II (Type 75) — Tactical STOL Assault TransportManufacturer: Shergill Aerospace, GorakhpurDesignation: Type 75 Tactical TransportRole: High-Wing Tactical Transport, Short-Field Operations, Maritime Patrol (Naval variant)Powerplant: 2 × KT-90 Turboprops with composite scimitar propellers (main) and composite trawling propellersPayload capacity: 20-25 tonnesShort-field performance: Take-off/landing under 800 metres over 50 feetHigh-altitude certification: Evaluated at Daulat Beg Oldie (operational clearance for specific strips pending November evaluation)Variants: Tactical Transport (IAF), Maritime Patrol (Indian Navy F-75-01 designation)First unit delivery: 6 aircraft (3 IAF to Bagdogra, 3 Navy to INS Hansa), 10 September 1976Initial production batch: 18 aircraft