There are moments when the news stops being news and becomes something else entirely.
The evening of March 5, 2026 was one of those moments.
A Su-30MKI took off from Jorhat airbase in Assam for a routine training flight. Radar contact was lost at 7:42 PM. The aircraft went down in the hilly terrain of Karbi Anglong district, approximately 60 kilometres from base. Both pilots — Squadron Leader Anuj and Flight Lieutenant Purvesh Duragkar — sustained fatal injuries. They could not eject.
The Indian Air Force confirmed their loss. The nation paused.
And then, as it always does, the news cycle moved on.
This post will not move on. Not yet.
They Were Not Statistics. They Were Trained, Skilled, and Irreplaceable.
Let us be clear about who we lost before we discuss anything else.
Squadron Leader Anuj and Flight Lieutenant Purvesh Duragkar were not passengers aboard a failing machine. They were combat-trained aviators operating one of the most demanding aircraft in the IAF’s inventory. The Su-30MKI is not a simple platform. It demands exceptional skill, constant alertness, and physical endurance that most people will never experience.
These men had all of that. And they still did not come home.
That is not a failure of the pilots. That is the brutal arithmetic of military aviation — and it demands more than condolences. It demands accountability, honest inquiry, and most of all, action.
The IAF has confirmed the loss. An inquiry is underway. We offer our deepest respects to the families of both officers. Their sacrifice is real. Their absence is permanent.
What happens next must be worthy of that sacrifice.
This Is Not the First Time. And That Is Precisely the Problem.
The Su-30MKI crash of March 5, 2026 is not an isolated incident.
Since the Su-30MKI was inducted into the IAF in 2002, this aircraft has now been involved in seven confirmed crashes. Seven. On a fleet that was — and remains — the backbone of India’s air combat capability, with approximately 272 aircraft in service.
Each time, there is an inquiry. Each time, there are condolences. Each time, the nation is told that safety is a priority.
And each time, another aircraft goes down.
This is not a criticism of the Su-30MKI as a platform — it is a world-class fighter, built with Russian airframe technology and Indian-integrated avionics, and it is operated by several air forces globally. The question is not whether the aircraft is capable. The question is whether India’s maintenance infrastructure, training pipeline, and modernisation timeline are keeping pace with the demands placed on an aging, heavily used fleet.
The answer, based on the pattern of incidents, is: not fast enough.
(Read our earlier analysis: Upgrade Alert — The Future of Indian Air Force Fighter Jets)
What the Numbers Say About IAF Fleet Safety
The IAF has recorded more than 20 crashes involving various aircraft types between 2015 and 2025, per data reported across Ministry of Defence statements and parliamentary question sessions.
The causes have varied — technical malfunction, bird strikes, pilot disorientation in poor visibility, maintenance lapses, and in some cases, a combination of factors that inquiries have taken years to fully untangle.
What the numbers consistently point to is this: India is asking its air force to do more with less, for longer, than the fleet was designed to sustain.
The IAF’s stated operational requirement is 42 fighter squadrons. Its current strength stands at approximately 30. That gap of 12 squadrons is not a planning footnote. It is a live operational deficit — one that increases the pressure on existing aircraft to fly more sorties, on existing pilots to train harder, and on ground crews to maintain platforms with limited downtime.
More flights. More hours. More strain on machinery that was already not new.
This is the environment in which Squadron Leader Anuj and Flight Lieutenant Purvesh Duragkar went up on March 5. It is the environment in which every IAF pilot operates today.
The Modernisation Timeline Cannot Afford More Delays
India has a plan. It has had a plan for years.
The Tejas Light Combat Aircraft — India’s indigenous fighter — is in production. The Tejas Mk1A represents a meaningful upgrade, with improved avionics and a more capable weapons suite. Orders have been placed. HAL has committed to delivery timelines.
The Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft — AMCA — is India’s next-generation ambition. A fifth-generation stealth platform that would place India in a very small global club of nations capable of designing and building their own advanced fighters.
These are real programmes. They represent genuine strategic intent.
But intent and timeline are not the same thing. And in the gap between them, pilots fly aircraft that are one failed system away from a crash in the hills of Karbi Anglong.
(Read the full story in our previous blog about the Tejas programme and what it means for IAF’s indigenous future)
The Rafale acquisition — 36 aircraft from France, now in active service — has been a genuine capability boost. These aircraft are modern, battle-proven, and maintained under robust support agreements. But 36 aircraft, across a fleet requirement of hundreds, is not a solution. It is a beginning.
India needs to close the squadron gap. It needs to accelerate Tejas Mk1A deliveries. It needs the AMCA programme to stay on track and on budget. And it needs to address the maintenance and readiness questions that keep surfacing in crash inquiries — before they surface again in another official confirmation of loss.
(Read the full story in our previous blog about the AMCA programme and India’s fifth-generation ambitions)
What an Inquiry Must Actually Deliver
Every crash is followed by an inquiry. That is correct procedure. That is how it should work.
But inquiries only matter if their findings drive change. And change only happens if the findings are acted upon — not filed, not classified into procedural archives, not quietly noted and then forgotten when the political cycle moves to the next crisis.
The inquiry into the March 5 crash must answer several hard questions:
- Was this a technical failure of the aircraft itself — and if so, is that failure mode present in other airframes in the fleet?
- Was maintenance on this specific aircraft current and compliant with IAF standards?
- Were the pilots flying within standard training parameters, or were operational pressures pushing the sortie beyond normal risk thresholds?
- Were weather conditions in the Karbi Anglong area assessed and communicated adequately before departure?
- Why could the pilots not eject? Was the ejection system functional? Were they able to initiate the sequence?
These are not hostile questions. They are the questions that every aviation safety board in the world asks after a fatal crash. They are the questions whose answers save the next crew.
The IAF must answer them. And the answers must be made available — not in full classified detail, but in substantive summary — to the public that funds this force and to the parliament that oversees it.
Accountability is not a threat to military culture. It is how professional militaries improve.
For the Families: This Country Owes You More Than Silence
Squadron Leader Anuj and Flight Lieutenant Purvesh Duragkar went up on the evening of March 5 for a training flight. They did not go up knowing it was their last. They went because that is what they do — quietly, professionally, without ceremony, as part of the daily work of keeping India’s skies secure.
Their families are now living with a loss that most of us will never fully comprehend.
The least this country can do is make sure their sacrifice leads somewhere. Not to another press release. Not to another promise about fleet modernisation. To actual, measurable change in how the IAF manages fleet readiness, pilot safety, and the dangerous gap between what it is asked to do and what it has been given to do it with.
Two brave men did not come home from Jorhat on March 5, 2026.
That must mean something beyond the news cycle.
The Road Ahead Has Not Changed — But the Urgency Has
The strategic imperatives we outlined in our April 2024 analysis remain exactly what they were. India needs 42 squadrons. It has 30. The Tejas programme must accelerate. The AMCA must not slip further. Collaborative manufacturing frameworks must move from paper to production. The IAF’s support network — logistics, AEW&C, drone integration — must grow alongside its combat assets.
None of that has changed.
What has changed is that two more names have been added to the list of those we have lost while waiting for the plan to become reality.
India’s pilots deserve better. Not eventually. Now.
Om Shanti. Squadron Leader Anuj. Flight Lieutenant Purvesh Duragkar. Rest in honour.
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