Squadron Leader S. Raghuvanshi, in his early thirties, perished today in a MiG-21 crash about 10-km from Avantipora in India’s northernmost state Jammu & Kashmir. Raghuvanshi, a qualified and experienced MiG-21 pilot was on a routine training sortie from Srinagar when his fighter, an upgraded MiG-21 Bison, went down shortly before 11am. Raghuvanshi, whose family lives near Meerut in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, is survived by his wife. On everyone’s behalf, I’d like express deepest condolences to his family, colleagues and friends.
India’s new defence minister Arun Jaitley expressed sorrow as he took office this morning, pledging to work hard to speed up stalled decisions and prioritise modernisation of the three services. The IAF chief, who met the new defence minister along with the other two chiefs, will be presenting a set of acquisition priorities to the minister next month, headlining the M-MRCA jet deal.
One more brave soul and warrior perished. I guess it high time Mig 21 are pohased out completely.
Go modi go!!! you can't save your pilots,,,PAF will wipe you out!!! hahaha
What . What did u said :,"PAF"
yaar ye to wo air force hai jiske planes America k diye hue tel par udte hai .
unpe itna ghamand.
Hoe many brave lives will be lost, how many families will be shattered and how much tax-payer money will be wasted before the politicians find the courage to do what needs to be done and retire the Mig-21 once and for all ?
Yes, many of our military aircraft and some of our finest pilots have gone down over the years. And every time this happens, I see the word "phased out" and "modernization" being used to the point of exhaustion. The fact is that there's more to it than just vintage aircraft, shoddy spares and aggressive flying. The all important Air Crash Investigation in the aftermath of the crash is where we really fall short. Once an aircraft crashes, each and every piece of evidence should be heavily scrutinized by forensic experts to prevent the same accident from recurring, instead of doing a namesake investigation and just leaving it at that half way. Find the problem and you can stop the accident even before it occurs!
NSR says —
Very sad indeed and condolences to the family of Pilot…
Getting to a squadron leader and losing his precious skills is sheer waste to family and above all country…
I think the HAL maintenance should be thoroughly revamped and possibly given to private/public partnership as every single plane is crashing…
RIP Brother
Condolences to the family of the pilot.
@Shiv: This Sathish Chandra is by all likelihood a Paki feigning to be an over zealous Indian jingoist or a retarded juvenile with a foot in the mouth problem. I have seen his BOT like comments sprawled all over ToI comments section. I feel it is imperative to moderate his comments or remove his posting privileges all together to maintain some order in your blog.
Its utterly ridiculous that the IAF keeps asking the moon from Tejas Mk-1, on one hand.
And on the other, it keeps flogging the old MiG-21s.
Who is this Cookoo Chandra…lol Shiv finally your blog has regained its No 1 spot, this is now unputdownable reading…… This guy should rename his blog to
cookoochandra.duhspot.con
Go to hell satish chandra, we come here to read some good articles about the armed forces, and you post your mindless crap. go find some cooky blog and post your drivel on that. uggh he is so annoying.