On IAF Day, a tale of when our air force showed how 'PAF is its bunny'

May 1997. It’s a summer day over Islamabad, the greenest of Pakistan’s major cities. Life is carrying on in the usual orderly fashion of this modern capital when suddenly: Boom! A terrifying explosion-like sound rents the sky and continues rolling like thunder through this city of chir pine and pomegranate trees. Pakistan’s air defense radars catch an aircraft streaking towards India — it’s not one of their own. The aircraft has just broken the sound barrier over Islamabad, and the sonic boom generated has echoed through the city’s streets, getting people to rush outside their homes and pretty much pausing every activity for a few moments. Scramble! A brace of Pakistan Air Force F-16s, a type called the Fighting Falcon by its US maker, takes to the air, armed to the teeth and cleared to destroy this impudent intruder. But this show of force is in vain because the intruder is a Garuda  — the Indian Air Force name for the Soviet-made MiG-25  — and flying at 65,000 feet which is well beyond the operational ceiling of the PAF’s top fighter aircraft. Even if the Garuda were below the 50,000-feet level (modern airliners cruise at about 35,000 feet), the Fighting Falcons would not have been able to catch up, for the Garuda was Mach 3-capable, and would have pulled away easily without the need to go all-out. Pakistan lodged a complaint; India denied the incident had taken place. Spyflights, a website dedicated to reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft, said that the MiG-25 pilot wanted to show that the ‘PAF was the IAF’s bunny’. The MiG-25 was, quite simply, the fastest interceptor ever built. In the 70s, one was tracked by radar flying at Mach 3.2 over the Sinai peninsula. How fast is Mach 3.2? It’s about 3,600 feet per second. To put that in context, a bullet fired from a modern military-grade rifle goes at about 2,300 feet per second. The aircraft set all sorts of speed and altitude records, including being the first aircraft ever to go beyond 35,000 m (115,000 feet). Many of these records still stand. One Soviet test pilot lost his engines to a flame-out in thin air in one of these edge-of-space flights, and coasted to his highest point on momentum alone, doing all of 75 kmph at that point. The defection of Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko with his MiG-25 to Japan in September 1976 was a major incident; a super-secret enemy aircraft fell into the American lap. Belenko landed at Hakodate Airport in Hokkaido after circling it three times, just missed a passenger plane that was taking off, and then overshot the runway. He had 30 seconds of fuel left when he landed. As the Americans took the plane apart later, they were amazed to find that this high-performance aircraft was built mostly out of a nickel-steel alloy and not titanium as they had assumed. They were shocked to find that the welding was done by hand and that rivets were used in the construction. Many experts laughed at the vacuum tube radar on the plane, some perceptively realised that the Soviet decision to not use solid-state tech would keep the radar going even if the plane flew through a nuclear blast. The robust simplicity of the aircraft was on display, and it took a while for experts to wrap their heads around it. The aircraft was returned to the Soviet Union in 40 boxes. They complained parts were missing and sent Japan a $100 million bill. Japan responded with a $40,000 bill for damage to its airport and shipping costs. Of course, the Foxbats, as Nato called them, were never regularly flown at 3 Mach or beyond; that would burn out the massive twin engines of the aircraft, but sustained flight at a jaw-dropping 2.3 Mach and above was easily done. The contemporary US-made SR 71, or the Blackbird, was at least as fast if not faster but it was built in much smaller numbers and only for reconnaissance. The MiG-25 was built to fight, packing four air-to-air missiles. The Indian Air Force did not, however, use its Mig-25s in the interceptor role. The incredible cameras that came with the reconnaissance version — so powerful that all of Pakistan could be mapped in less than 10 flights — and the mind-bending edge-of-space altitudes the Garuda could fly at meant it was perfectly suited to photograph and map out terrain and infrastructure in both China (Tibet) and Pakistan. And both China and Pakistan couldn’t do a thing about it. Indian Mig-25s — we had between eight and 10 making up the aptly named Trisonics squadron operating from Bareilly —would hop across the Himalayas in a few minutes, take all the pictures they wanted and return safe, sound and unmolested. That’s what the Islamabad sortie was about, then Pakistan foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan saying that strategic installations around Islamabad had been photographed by Indian MiGs. India’s Garudas played a key role both in the Kargil war of 1999 and then in Operation Parakram 2001-02. By 2006, a shortage of spare parts had brought the mighty Garudas to the end of their service. The type was phased out. IAF pilots still speak with love and awe about the MiG-25. Technological advances have meant that satellites have taken over the role of the imaging that the Garudas did. But then satellites won’t ever gift Islamabad a sonic boom any time soon!​