IAF infighting squeezes Army at Siachen

The Pay Commission had recommended that the fighter pilots get Rs 3,200 and the transport pilots Rs 2,400. A zealous Cabinet increased the allotment for the fighter pilots, but left the transport stream stranded. There is acute disquiet amongst the transport and helicopter stream pilots over this issue.

For the first time, their flying pay is being pegged lower than that of the fighter stream, and being the only operationally committed branch of the Air Force, there is a distinct possibility of this frustration boiling over as a demonstrated action. And the principal victims would then be troops on Siachen, for they are dependent most of all on aerial supplies.

In the changed nature of conflict in today’s environment, the primary air role resides in the transport and helicopter fleets, and since December 1971, it is only the transport and helicopter pilots who have been deployed in live combat situations. This includes the entire Siachen campaign, Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka, the Maldives action, as well as other operations. On the other hand, fighter pilots have undertaken only fair-weather training missions.

While this spat is rooted in the pay differences announced by the Government of India between the fighter and transport pilots, Ministry of Defence (MoD) sources disclosed that there is a proposal from Air Headquarters to equate the flying pay of the three services. According to the proposal, all armed forces pilots should get Rs 7,000 as flying pay, with the fighter pilots of the Air Force getting Rs 2,000 more. The logic, according to MoD sources, is that the fighter pilots face greater risk than any other type of soldiering.

There are many in South Block who are amazed that the additional allowance of a jawan at Siachen is being equated with that of a pilot, for, as an official said, “Siachen is a combat zone, day in and day out. Which is not the case for fighter pilots, who fly in a peacetime situation and in good weather”. Nonetheless, the fear of a `go slow’ adopted by the helicopter pilots looms large over South Block. For then the Army jawans will feel the heat at Siachen.

Any `go slow’ by the transport pilots will affect the Army’s operations in insurgency riven areas, but it is going to be felt most acutely in Siachen. Army posts on the world’s highest battlefield are totally air supplied, with some like Bana Post at almost 21,000 feet. The dependence on aerial delivery of supplies is, therefore, complete.

Any adverse action undertaken by the helicopter pilots will have a reaction on the morale of the troops, say South Block sources. “Especially when they see a colleague slowly slipping into death and in spite of clear skies there is no helicopter to take him out”, said an official. “What the Pakistan Army could not do after 13 years of fighting on the glacier will slowly get done to India’s Army by its own Air Force, because of the disparity of flying pay. And the government is oblivious to the danger”, added the official.