Sipu Jha
NEW DELHI: Indian Air Force Chief A P Singh rubbished tech billionaire Elon Musk‘s recent claim that manned aircraft will be replaced by drones in future warfare, saying that he is a businessman and will say things like this to run his business. Elon Musk recently posted on X, saying, “Drones are the future of warfare, Manned aircraft are not.” Mentioning ongoing major programs around the world as an example, Singh said that they continue to bet on manned fighter jets.
‘Not going to fade away’
“At the moment, there are three or four major programs which are going on in the world, which they are calling the Sixth Gen Aircraft Program, NGAD, other different names. Now, all of them are manned,” he said.He asserted that the “importance of man” is not going to “fade away” in future, stressing that unmanned systems will become increasingly relevant; they cannot function in isolation.
‘Relevance of fighters will remain’
“There will be unmanned systems. But those unmanned systems have to work in collaboration with the manned system or have to be controlled by a man. So the relevance of fighters will remain in the years to come,” Singh added.
‘He is a businessman’
Singh further drew a pointed contrast with Musk’s business-centric outlook, saying that he is a businessman and “he will talk about it like that because he himself is running a business.” “His cars, now you see how many of them are there on the road. I’m talking about just a simple car. When it comes to war fighting, I don’t think we can just say that the next generation will see only unmanned by the end of their tenure. It will not happen like that. So manned platforms will remain,” he added.
Singh hails Operation Sindoor
Singh, who was addressing a press conference on the 93rd Air Force Day celebrations in New Delhi, also dismissed Pakistan’s claims of shooting down Indian fighter jets during Operation Sindoor, calling them “Manohar Kahaniyan” (fanciful stories).“If they think they shot down 15 of my jets, let them think about it. I hope they’re convinced about it, and they will cater for 15 less aircraft in my inventory when they come to fight again. So why should I talk about it? Even today, I won’t say anything about what happened, how much damage was done, how it happened, because let them find out,” he said. “Have you seen a single picture where something fell on any of our airbases, something hit us, a hangar was destroyed, or anything like that? We showed so many pictures of their places. However, they couldn’t show us even a single picture. So their narrative is ‘Manohar Kahaniyan’. Let them be happy, after all, they also have to show something to their audience to save their reputation. That doesn’t matter to me,” Singh added.
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