The MiG-21 episode demonstrates that procurement is always strategic.
Choices about what aircraft to acquire, who builds them, who supplies the spares, who trains the pilots and technicians are decisions with political consequences lasting for decades.
When the Indian Air Force formally retires the MiG-21 on September 26, 2025, it closes a long chapter in which a single platform was both an instrument of combat and an engine of strategic alignment.
Over six decades of service, the MiG-21 has left behind not just stories of sorties and pilots but also a legacy that compels a re-examination of the international forces that turned its induction into a structural watershed in India's defence planning and external relations.
In Washington's Cold War calculus of the 1950s, Pakistan was a crucial partner for regional containment.
John Foster Dulles, US secretary of state from 1953 through 1960, saw Pakistan as far more useful in the United States' fight against communism.
Dulles harboured distrust of Nehru's nonaligned stance and his outreach to both Moscow and Beijing.
At the same time, US policy makers worried that allowing India to drift too close to Soviet or Chinese influence would upset the global balance of power.
Therefore, the US felt a requirement to keep India dependent on them while splitting the possible alliance between the then USSR, China and India. To do this, Pakistan became a willing and eager partner.
The Mutual Defence Assistance agreement and related security arrangements of the early 1950s created formal channels through which military aid flowed to Islamabad.
SEATO and CENTO provided institutional frames that facilitated sustained transfers of arms and training.
Declassified records in the United States show repeated requests from Islamabad for modern aircraft and repeated approvals from Washington, sometimes ahead of Congressional objections about cost.
The material consequences of that alignment became visible across South Asia.
US-supplied aircraft reached Pakistan on terms that imposed little burden on its economy, while India's acquisitions involved a substantial foreign exchange drain.
Since the US outright rejected India's request for the same fighter jets as those supplied to Pakistan, India had to rely on Britain, France and Canada for aircraft like the Hawker Hunter, the Mystere, and the Canberra.
Parliamentary debates in London and Ottawa from the period register concerns about how much India was paying for these aircraft, and foreign office correspondence reveals that Britain and France were uncomfortable with the idea of full production licences being granted to New Delhi.
At the same time, the United States pursued covert operations aimed at weakening Chinese control over Tibet to derail Sino-India bonhomie.
Declassified CIA files and documents from the Wilson Digital Archive show operations beginning in the mid-1950s that involved paramilitary training of Tibetan refugees, propaganda broadcasts into Tibet, and logistical supply lines passing through neighbouring territories.
Pakistan provided the bases in East Pakistan while the overflights were carried out without India's knowledge.
These covert operations appear in CIA internal dispatches as efforts to destabilise Chinese frontier administration, which in turn increased Chinese suspicion of India's involvement and hardened border policy.
Indian strategic assessments made available from the declassified National Security Archive show that New Delhi perceived these operations as raising the risk of Chinese military action more aggressively than before.
Besides the rising tension with China, the urgency of a fighter jet increased when, in April 1959, an Indian Canberra bomber was shot down over Pakistani territory.
The Canberra had been inducted largely to allow India to conduct bombing and high-altitude reconnaissance missions beyond the capability of the Pakistan air force's US-supplied jets.
The shoot down was taken in New Delhi as evidence that Pakistan's US-supplied aircraft and training had given it reach it otherwise lacked, and that strategic options for India were narrowing.
Domestic government records from India's ministry of defence note that this incident stiffened the resolve of Indian military planners about the need for advanced fighter jets.
Parallel to these military and geopolitical pressures, India's economy was under strain.
The foreign exchange crisis of 1957 depleted reserves, and Planning Commission reports from that time record serious concerns about how defence imports were cutting into allocations for infrastructure and agriculture.
The Aid-India Consortium, composed of the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan and the World Bank, monitored India's import bills closely.
Lenders repeatedly asked New Delhi to explain how expenditure on defence impacted India's developmental budgets.
Declassified documents show Washington supported some economic aid to India, but conditioned or delayed the supply of strategic equipment requests from India.
The Indus Water Treaty of 1960 was negotiated in this environment.
The United States encouraged the treaty to reduce bilateral friction between Pakistan and India, which might otherwise have distracted from US strategic objectives in the region.
The treaty's negotiation reduced overt hostilities over water but did nothing to reduce Pakistan's military buildup under American aid.
New Delhi felt the treaty was a tactical success but insufficient to mitigate strategic imbalance.
As military imbalance increased and frontiers with China remained uncertain, India sought a supersonic platform to give both deterrence and altitude advantage.
Western suppliers offered aircraft, but with conditions and without guarantees of licensed production or full technology transfer.
In diplomatic cables from the British Foreign Office and US State Department examined in declassified files, India's requests for the F-104 Starfighter or other supersonic aircraft were either refused outright or attached to restrictive terms on maintenance or future production.
Britain offered fighters like the Lightning but would not permit engine manufacturing or avionics transfer.
In that diplomatic impasse, Moscow's offer stood apart.
The Soviet leadership debated the costs and benefits of providing India with MiG-21 airframes and the technical support to assemble and maintain them domestically.
Soviet motivation included expanding influence in South Asia, countering the US strategic advantage in the Indian Ocean region, and enhancing the prestige of its fighter design.
The Soviet Union perceived that offering technology transfer would make India more deeply reliant on Soviet aerospace, logistics and spare parts, and therefore more aligned in procurement norms, even if formally non-aligned.
In August 1962, India and the Soviet Union agreed that an initial batch of MiG-21s would be supplied from Soviet factories while Hindustan Aeronautics Limited would build assembly lines and gradually take up production.
Indian government planning documents reviewed in secondary sources note that this agreement included technical training for Indian pilots and engineers, local manufacture of specific aircraft components, and logistical support for spares.
For India, this satisfied the requirement of a supersonic fighter while preserving foreign exchange by not paying the full cost of entirely imported platforms.
The structural consequences of that decision were long-lasting.
Once licence production commenced, India established training pipelines, maintenance infrastructure, spare parts reservoirs, and doctrinal adjustments for Soviet-style aircraft.
Over the next decade, India acquired more Soviet built or Soviet designed tanks, transport aircraft, and naval platforms.
The relationship was not purely opportunistic; it became foundational.
From an international relations perspective, the MiG-21 episode demonstrates that procurement is always strategic.
Choices about what aircraft to acquire, who builds them, who supplies the spares, who trains the pilots and technicians are decisions with political consequences lasting for decades.
India's acceptance of the MiG-21 package in 1962 was shaped by necessity created by the US-Pakistan collusion, not ideology.
The urgent need to close a capability gap and protect foreign exchange weighed at least as heavily as any alignment preference.
The MiG-21 went on to establish an exceptional operational record in Indian service.
Although its induction was delayed slightly and unavailable during the 1962 conflict, as Moscow deliberately delayed delivery while temporarily aligning with Beijing during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it soon became the backbone of the IAF's supersonic fleet.
The aircraft participated in subsequent conflicts and crises, and in 2019 earned distinction by downing a Pakistani F-16, underscoring its enduring combat relevance.
Successive licensed upgrades allowed the platform to remain effective, but its prolonged service also entrenched India's dependence on Soviet supply chains for avionics, engines, and spares.
While enabling sustained force levels in the short term, this dependency gradually created logistical bottlenecks and slowed modernisation, highlighting the strategic trade-offs embedded in the 1962 agreement.
When on September 26, 2025, the MiG-21 is ceremonially retired, it is worth recalling that this aircraft was more than a piece of military hardware.
It was the result of a dual policy by the United States, an overt policy of military aid to Pakistan and a covert policy of destabilising operations along India's northern frontiers.
It was the product of India's imperatives of strategic necessity under economic constraint.
It was the offering of Soviet willingness to grant what others refused: technology transfer, licensed production and operational capability.
The MiG-21 was India's entry into the supersonic age and the foundation of its aerospace industry.
Still, it was also a symbol of a long-term supplier dependence that shaped half a century of defence policy.
Its de-induction closes a chapter that cannot simply be judged by combat sorties or kill counts.
It must be seen through how global strategies were made, how economic limits were pushed, how sovereignty over technology was asserted, and how dependency became part of strategic posture.
Dr Kumar is a Research Scholar who has extensively researched the 1962 conflict and Cold War dynamics.
Photographs curated by Anant Salvi/Rediff
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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