The russians were able to deceive India on the issue of the reliability of the onboard Zhuk-ME radar systems, which began to fail frequently, which effectively led to the loss of combat capability of the MiG-29K fighters. The resource promised by the Russians for this radar before breakdowns occurred was overestimated by 2.5 to 6 times more than the real one.
The relevant information emerged from documents of the russian state corporation Rostec leaked by Black Mirror hackers. These papers show that the problem has existed for years, accompanied by delays in repairing the failed radars, as well as by the russian side's failure to fulfill its obligations under agreements signed with India.
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In particular, the basic contract required that the radar's Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) should be 150 hours. At the same time, in practice, in 2016 this value fell to 97 hours, while in mid-2017 – to 60 hours.
In turn, the Mean Time Between Demand (MTBD) should have been 120 hours, but in 2016 in practice it was at the level of 20 hours. That is, India, when operating its naval aviation, almost constantly encountered some problems associated with the low quality of the Russian MiG-29K aircraft systems.
A study of the documents published by the Black Mirror hackers revealed that in order to meet the specified requirements, the russians also included MiG-29K aircraft on which radar mock-ups were installed in the flight resource calculations. That is, as a result, the indicator of the guaranteed operation time of the radar was overestimated, which helped to deceive the buyer.
All this time, negotiations were underway between the Indians and the russians to correct the situation, while delays in repairs to correct the problems were mentioned. At the same time, several modernizations were allegedly carried out, which led to a slight temporary improvement in the situation.
The papers also indicate that it is currently unknown who will pay for further refinement of the unreliable radars. More over, in 2019 the Indian Navy canceled the certification of the Zhuk-ME radar system. It also became known that the MiG-29K/KUB constantly had low overall serviceability in the range from 15% to 47% of the total fleet - mainly due to airframe defects, engine malfunctions and electronics.
After the disclosure of information about the unreliability of the systems of the aircraft purchased by India from the russian federation, it becomes clear why the Indian military ultimately opted for the Rafale M as a new carrier based fighter.
Even the russian federation itself seems to understand that it will no longer be possible to interest the Indian Navy in its aircraft. At the same time, in other areas of aviation, the russians continue to push forward, imposing on India the full localization of the Su-57E aircraft.
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