No emotions or Romance in War
JM: How many Saber jets do you have on your notches?
DK: (With air of modesty yet showing satisfaction) Well, pilots do not talk of their feats. That’s a tradition and I would like to keep it up.
JM: How does Gnat compare with the Mirage?
DK: It is -I mean – it was the most maneuverable of machines available and miniature thing to fly. In its days, it was the undoubted numero uno but it requited a very high degree of skill to control and fly. But the technology of that plane was old. With the Mirage, we have entered a new era of tactics. Today, our radar will locate the enemy and that’s the end of the story. You don’t have to wage a man-to-man battle. Analogically, it’s like fighting with a sword and fighting with a gun. The very concept of aerial warfare has undergone a metamorphosis. This is where the difference lies: The technology, the avionics, the capabilities, the missiles are far better. But that time, since you had to go into the arena to win the bout , maneuverability was very important.
JM: You are one of the most highly decorated officer of the Air Force. Please tell me about various awards won by you.
DK: In the 1965 Pak war, I was awarded a Vir Chakra, For the Goa operations, I had a commendation from the Chief of the Air Staff. Then I had another commendation and two commendations by the AOC-in-C. In 1979 when I was in command of the fighter combat school. I twice brought back air crafts which were about to crash. For that, my shoulders were pinned up with a Kirti Chakra- the hightest gallantry award in peace time. And January 26 this year. I was awarded the Ati Vishishta Seva Medal, probably for setting up this base in the shortest possible time.
JM: With the influx of sophisticated and super-sophisticated air-craft, do you feel that a lot still depends upon the man behind the joy stick?
DK: It depends on the man behind the joy stick in toto. In all types and classes of planes, the job of the pilot is overriding. The job of the pilot is immensely exacting .We are nowhere near the age when he can just sit back and watch the fireworks cracking. All the amount of effort to reach that finesse is mammoth. And I can safely say that today, he has to work much lesser than in my days. The technology is totally geared to make the pilot work the minimum so that he can concentrate on the weapons. It’s much easier to fly the aircraft today because they don’t want you to worry about flying, they want you to be jacked up with the avionics and your arsenal.
JM: Our pilots are rated the best, why?
DK: (After a long pause) For one, it is inherent and secondly we train them very well so as not to leave any crevices what- so ever. We have had the experience of war. Today the weakest link of the armed forces is that they have not tasted real blood. So they do not know what it is like. In war you learn the most obvious of things which you overlook in training. And the wars which we have fought-they have taught us much more than the whole lot of training could. That is why in ’62, we lost on all fronts due to a simple reason-inexperience. Today, we can never commit the same error again-in fact we have moved from strength to strength.
JM: And now to the piece deresistance – the Mirage 2000H! Firstly, why is the Mirage 2000H, a Mirage 2000H? Likewise the F-16s MiG-21s, why are the suffixes there?
DK: It is a French selection. They had the Mirage-3, then they had the Mirage-5, then they had the Mirage-4, then they had the Mirage F1, and now the Mirage 2000H. Probably talking in terms of the year 2000.