{"id":16617,"date":"2022-07-30T08:44:48","date_gmt":"2022-07-30T08:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/?p=16617"},"modified":"2022-07-30T08:44:50","modified_gmt":"2022-07-30T08:44:50","slug":"india-to-ground-mig-21-fighter-jets-by-2025-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/?p=16617&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"India to ground MiG-21 fighter jets by 2025: report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Mishaal Arshad C.M Underground News<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>India will ground all its Soviet-era Russian fighter jets, the MiG-21, by 2025, following the death of two officers in a crash, the latest in a series of casualties involving the single-engine jet\u2019s failure, a newspaper reported on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\u00a0<em>Times of India<\/em>\u00a0quoted unnamed Indian Air Force officials as saying the MiG-21s are long past their retirement but must be replaced before being grounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The report did not specify what portion of India\u2019s fighter-jet capability would be affected. The\u00a0<em>Wion<\/em>\u00a0news outlet said the air force has around 70 MiG-21s. The air force and defence ministry have been buying aircraft from Western makers in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A senior defence ministry official declined to confirm or deny the\u00a0<em>Times of India<\/em>\u00a0report, telling\u00a0<em>Reuters<\/em>\u00a0only that discussions on the future of the MiG-21 were underway, as sourcing of spare parts from Russia was increasingly difficult due to the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A defence ministry spokesman did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The MiG-21, dubbed \u201cflying coffins\u201d by the Indian press, has been the country\u2019s key fighter jet since its introduction in 1963 but has been plagued by crashes in later years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The jets have been a critical security asset in India\u2019s military infrastructure, used for example to strike neighbour Pakistan after an alleged suicide attack in the occupied Kashmir region in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thursday\u2019s crash of an air force MiG-21 Bison in the desert state of Rajasthan brings to six the number of MiG-21 crashes since last year, with five officers killed, according to official data and a source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2012, then-Defence Minister A.K. Antony told parliament that more than half of India\u2019s 872 MiG-21s had been lost to crashes over the previous four decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mishaal Arshad C.M Underground News India will ground all its Soviet-era Russian fighter jets, the MiG-21, by 2025,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_appearance_grid":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,71,101,34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-important-news","8":"category-latest-news","9":"category-science-and-technology","10":"category-world","11":"cs-entry","12":"cs-video-wrap"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16621,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617\/revisions\/16621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}