A military band played Auld Lang Syne as the IAF retired its fleet of MiG-25 spy planes, a quarter century after they were inducted.
BAREILLY (Uttar Pradesh): A military band played Auld Lang Syne as the Indian Air Force on Monday retired its fleet of MiG-25 spy planes, a quarter century after they were inducted and whose existence the IAF had been extremely reticent to admit.
"It was so secret that they won't even tell me about it (till I reached a certain rank)," IAF chief Air Chief Marshal S P Tyagi said, half in jest, during a media interaction after a brief but moving de-induction ceremony at this air base, 250 km from New Delhi.
Monday was the first day that the giant aircraft, taller than a two-storey building, was displayed in public. Ironically, it was also the day on which it flew its last strategic reconnaissance mission.
Little wonder then that Wing Commander S K Taliyan, who flew the mission, could barely hold back his tears as he handed the Form 700 - the complete operational record of the aircraft - to Tyagi at the de-induction ceremony.
"It was a very emotional moment for me. We air warriors are very attached to our machines and this is the end of an era, but life must go on," Taliyan told reporters.
Tyagi also touched on the theme, saying that while the MiG-25 was nowhere near the end of its operational life, the IAF had to weigh the effectiveness of keeping it in service against the cost of obtaining similar information from the plethora of satellites that dot the sky.
"The MiG-25 could fly at great height and speed and the enemy could not do anything but watch," Tyagi said.
"In today's satellite era, we don't need to go over the enemy. Reconnaissance data is available to us in real time. Thus, the Foxbat (as the aircraft has been code-named) is not cost-effective to us," he added.
Designed to function both as a long-range high-level interceptor, the MiG-25 holds the world altitude record of 123,524 feet, which is more than three times the altitude a commercial airline can achieve.
The aircraft has the ability to fly at altitudes where the earth appears round and the air is so thin that 99 percent of the earth's atmosphere is below the plane.
"You feel you are communing with the almighty. When you look up, it is all blue, merging into black and you feel you can almost touch the stars," Taliyan said of the feeling of flying at such heights.
Illustrious career
The MiG-25s monitored Chinese troop movements in Arunachal Pradesh following reports of incursions in the 80s and early 90s
Photographed militant training camps across the LoC, mapped enemy positions during ‘Operation Vijay’ in Kargil in 1999
Kept a close eye on Pakistani formations during ‘Operation Parakram’ in 2002
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