New Delhi: ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta talked about two key issues in episode 564 of ‘Cut The Clutter’ — the formal operational induction of five Rafale fighters in the Indian Air Force and AstraZeneca halting trials of the Oxford Covid vaccine after unexplained illness cropped up in one of the trial patients.

“It was a happy day,” said Gupta, talking about the induction ceremony of the five Rafale jets at the Ambala air base Thursday.

These jets were delivered by France on 29 July, while another four jets are expected to arrive in late October. Thus, by approximately June 2021, the first squadron of the Rafale jets are expected to be fully operational.

“This is a step forward,” said Gupta.

He also mentioned that it is after more than two decades that India added a major international aviation system to its fleet since the Sukhoi 30s, that were inducted in 1997.

The term ‘game changer’ is being used to describe the Rafale fighters and, according to Gupta, it is not wrong.

This will be the “best plane with the best missiles and the best electronics in the subcontinent”, he said.

On warfare and Rafale’s role in IAF

Rafale has three kinds of missiles. The METEOR, which is the longest-range missile in the subcontinent; the MICA, which is as good as the longest-range missile currently in the subcontinent that is the American AMRAM; and SCALP, which is a long-range, heavy air-to-surface cruise missile.

Gupta explained that if the Rafale jets had been used for the Balakot mission, the pilots would not have required to even cross the Line of Control or the border.

However, reiterating something that he said in an earlier episode of CTC, Gupta noted that in a warfare, one’s best aircraft does not go necessarily against the adversary’s best aircraft.

“Sometimes it’s luck. Sometimes it’s compulsion. Sometimes it’s the fog of war. And a war gives you very few choices”, he explained.

This is what happened on 27 February 2019, a day after Balakot, when Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s jet was shot down. This was because at that point and on that day, India’s weakest aircraft came against Pakistan’s strongest aircraft.

Gupta explained that warfare was not a Grand Slam tennis tournament where players are seeded and draws made in a way where you encounter players of equal seeding or close ranking.

He also spoke about an article written by Air Commodore Kaiser Tufail from Pakistan. Tufail wrote that it was not only now that the IAF discovered the inadequacies with Mig29s and Sukhoi 30s. It is because they knew about these inadequacies that they were searching for something like the Rafale.

The air commodore, in his article, went on to say that 27 February 2019 showed that the two IAF Sukhoi 30s were not able to connect with a data link between themselves and were of no use or no help to each other, which caused confusion.

Gupta explained that Tufail is an honest soldier because unlike other Pakistanis he did not believe that the Pakistan Air Force downed any Sukhoi 30, as was claimed by them.

His article also added that despite state-of-the-art jets, Pakistan has an edge over India because all its jets are linked to a defence ground environment, airborne early warning systems, ground sensors and all this is a work in progress for India.

Oxford vaccine trials

Gupta then turned to the negative news — the vaccine trials of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine, where one out of the 10,000 trial participants had an adverse effect.

These vaccine trials were very sensitive and because of one adverse event, an entire trial has been stopped, including the one being conducted by the Serum Institute of India in Pune.

The one participant had a spinal inflammation and it is now being investigated whether the inflammation had anything to do with the vaccine.

However, this is all a part of normal vaccine testing and should not dishearten anyone, said Gupta.

Referring to a health newsletter by the Washington Post, he said Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have already been tested on 60,000 patients.

“So chances are that any side-effect or any adverse effect of the vaccine will be known, except something that may happen in the rarest of rare cases,” Gupta added.

He listed the many roadblocks that occurred during the development of the polio and swine flu vaccines in the past and explained that testing a vaccine was a very cautious thing.

Furthermore, chances are some of these vaccines will get emergency usage approval by the end of the year, but only for people with vulnerabilities or those of a certain age.

Watch the latest episode of CTC here:

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