Air Chief: BAE Systems has admitted to its mistakes

In an exclusive interview to Headlines Today, Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal FH Major has admitted that "mistakes" were made in the Hawk advanced jet trainer procurement that have led to serviceability problems.

"BAE has admitted that they had made a mistake here, here and here. They were gracious, and now we are back on track," Major said. He also clarified that the "rusted" spares that had been widely reported in newspapers following the Hawk crash, was the erroneous noting of a team that had observed some discoloration of some pipe components, and had nothing to do with rust.

"The accident that happened had nothing to do with these problems. The court of inquiry report is yet to be completed and brought to our notice," the Chief said.

In an interesting revelation, the Chief spoke out for the first time about the air force's MAFI programme. The Modernisation of Air Field Infrastructure programme proposes to upgrade and comprehensively network, initially, 38 airfields (both in use and inactive) and bring them up to levels where they can handle all manner of aviation. Following this, all other airfields will be standardised to a prescribed standard, the parameters of which will be defined in the first phase of MAFI.

The Chief also spoke about the LCA engine problem and how it doesn't meet IAF requirements and new revelations about fresh parameters set for urban warfare, and presented to the government for consideration

I will be posting a full interview transcript here shortly.

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