Air Force Vice-Chief hits out at politicians ..Tribune

Air Force Vice-Chief hits out at politicians

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 19

The Vice Chief of the IAF, Air Marshal PK Barbora, today dropped a proverbial bombshell. He summarised that “politics” over defence purchases impinged on the country's military requirements and plans to buy new equipment.
In a way he blamed the entire political class of stalling defence projects just to hit out at political opponents. Making some of the most forthright comments, Barbora said: “Internal politics over the years is such that whatever defence requirements are cleared by the government, they are opposed by the opposition parties and the same happens when roles change and opposition sits in the government." ”All this impinges very badly on our defence requirements,” he told said at a seminar ‘Energising aviation sector in India’ organised by the CII. Barbora also painted a dismal picture about the country's defence exports saying: “We don't even match up with Pakistan.”
On the present status of the country's capabilities in the aerospace sector, he said India was happy producing small parts of aircraft and exporting them to Airbus in Europe, but China has already started building whole aircraft for the same company.
Air Marshall Barbora asked the private companies to learn reverse engineering processes the way China did to develop most of its defence technologies. “Forget about ethics. China has done all the reverse engineering. Has anyone ever had the courage to ask China why are you doing it? No one cares a hoot. If you can't do it yourself, you should know how to do reverse engineering.”
Notably two days after he had created a major controversy with his comments over induction of women as fighter pilots, Barbora today issued an apology saying: “My remarks concerning induction of women fighter pilots into the IAF have come in for a lot of discussion in the media. I would like to clarify that my remarks concerning ‘off-spring’ and ‘imposing some conditions’ were my own personal opinion and not that of the IAF or the Defence Ministry.”