Death of Group Captain Ashish Gupta, a seasoned fighter pilot, in a MiG-21 Bison fighter crash today has cast a pall of gloom over the Indian Air Force

Late Group Captain Gupta was all set to take charge as the Commanding Officer of a frontline MiG-21 squadron in Rajasthan last month

Two MiG-21 crashes 71 days apart. In one, the Commanding Officer of the squadron survived. In the second, the man who was to replace him as Commanding Officer, didn't. A bitter irony that has emerged in the latest tragedy to hit the Indian Air Force.

The death of Group Captain Ashish Gupta, a seasoned fighter pilot, in a MiG-21 Bison fighter crash today over Central India has cast an especially dark pall of gloom over the Indian Air Force.

The officer was on a combat training mission, which ended in an emergency he apparently couldn't eject from. While a Court of Inquiry will go into every last detail of what happened, the irony is a deeply tragic one.

Earlier posted to the IAF's Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment (TCDE), late Group Captain Gupta was all set to take charge as the Commanding Officer of a frontline MiG-21 squadron in Rajasthan last month -- a move that was delayed by January MiG-21 fighter crash in January in Suratgarh, in which the then Commanding Officer of the squadron Group Captain Nitin Nayal had managed to eject.

That the outgoing and inbound Commanding Officers of the same frontline MiG-21 squadron faced crashing aircraft just over two months apart is only the latest in a saga of controversy surrounding the vintage Soviet aircraft type.

Once operated in a huge numbers as the backbone of the Indian Air Force, four squadrons of the type remain. Upgrades and upkeep have kept the jets not just fit for flight, but effective in combat too.

But a spate of crashes, many of them fatal, has amplified the urge to see the backs of these ageing jets as quickly as possible.

The Indian Air Force will soon have its first full squadron of indigenous TEJAS jets. With the IAF signing up for over 100 more Tejas jets, most of them of an improved variety, the IAF leadership could theoretically be in a position to hasten the retirement of its MiG-21 fighters.

The challenges of squadron strength and depleting numbers, however, make any drastic moves unlikely and difficult.

The IAF has consistently held that there is never a single compromise on keeping aircraft flightworthy, no matter how old they are. Apart from the sheer number of flight hours generated by these jets, several other variables have crept in from time to time across accidents involving MiG-21s, including quality control in license manufacture of MiG-21s by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, availability of quality spares and, quite simply, the age of the jets themselves.

While vastly improved over their baseline variants, it is still true that the IAF has been using MiG-21s since the late 1960s.

Arguments that the MiG-21s ought to be retired post haste since brand new Rafale jets are trickling in also don't really hold weight.

The Indian Air Force has acknowledged the legacy leap provided by the Rafales, but wisdom, experience and doctrine still dictates there is no replacement for sheer numbers of airframes that an air force can throw into a fight.

India's airspace and security atmosphere since early 2019, and right through 2020, has proven that the need for credible, dependable airpower is being felt more than at any time since the Kargil conflict.