Pulling ‘g’ was like shedding mental and physical cobwebs accumulated over eight years of ‘life after Air Force’ and proved to be highly therapeutic, to say the least

An upward twist and a gentle forward push of the throttle and the afterburner roared into life quickly accelerating the ‘Super Viper’ down Runway 09 at Indian Air Force Yelahanka base near Bangalore. Pushed by an awesome 32,000 pounds of thrust of the GE F110-132A, the ‘jet’ leapt off the terra firma after a short take-off roll. Retracting the landing gear from the front cockpit, ‘Benson Hedges’, Falcon 2, in a two-ship formation handed over the controls to me for what turned out to be another highly memorable and in some ways remarkably different F-16 sortie.

It was on March 27, 1995, while leading an IAF delegation to the US, I had the first opportunity to fly an F-16 at one of the United States Air Force flying training bases. But the aircraft that I flew on that occasion was the earlier F-16B model of the Fighting Falcon. Almost 15 years later, what I flew on February 10, during the Aero India 2011 air show was an infinitely superior airplane in many aspects compared to its older sibling. According to its manufacturer Lockheed Martin, evolutionary integration of technologies of its latest F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightening II fifth generation fighters has made the Super Viper emerge as the ultimate ‘fourth generation fighter’ that meets or exceeds India’s medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) requirements and is absolutely the right choice for the IAF.

Earlier, I had been given a quick run of the Super Viper’s capabilities in the simulator at Lockheed’s main show pavilion in Hall ‘E’ at the exhibition grounds. The briefing and cockpit familiarisation were conducted in a highly efficient manner bringing out the unique qualities of the active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar with simultaneous multi-mode functions, the full-colour all-digital cockpit, net-centric warfare and electronic warfare capabilities. Now it was time to experience the real stuff in the air. After take-off, on instructions from Ben, I banked the aircraft in a climbing turn to the right to move into the assigned south-west sector for our manoeuvres. Even though saddled with the conformal fuel tanks (CFTs) on both sides of the fuselage, the Super Viper handles with ease during all types of manoeuvres such as hard turns, wingovers, barrel rolls, loops, etc, which I carried out with great pleasure during the initial handling of the aircraft in the sector. Pulling ‘g’ was like shedding mental and physical cobwebs accumulated over eight years of ‘life after Air Force’ and proved to be highly therapeutic, to say the least. However, as usual, such heavenly joys are short-lived and after about 10 minutes of aerobatics, we got down to the serious business of exploring operational capabilities of the ‘jet’. Ben demonstrated the capabilities of the APG-80, the only AESA radar available in the international market today. This revolutionary all-weather precision targeting sensor provides outstanding situational awareness and detection, ultra-high resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mapping, fully interleaved with automatic terrain following and air-to-air tracking of multiple targets. We killed a couple of ‘bandits’ in mock missile attacks and then engaging the terrain following mode at 100 ft agl (above ground level), enjoyed the hands-off camel ride over the hilly terrain of western Karnataka, which incidentally was dotted with windmills.