Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War - Netflix Series

Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War | Official Trailer | Netflix India
Netflix India

Pakistan and India have been fighting over Kashmir since forever. It's basically been a stalemate, but back in 1999 Pakistan got a bee in their bonnet and decided to push a little harder.

I was looking for a map of the area but I'm not finding anything that's making me happy, but then I noticed we've got the Indus River running through the area. This video lays essential ground work if you want to understand what's going on here:

Indus River explained in under 3 minutes
FactSpark

Kashmir is basically a bunch of snow covered mountains. Every spring the Indian and Pakistan armies advance into Kashmir and approach the Line of Control. In 1999 Pakistan decides to advance early and pushes past the Line of Control into territory normally held by India. Now things get hot and the Indian Army is having a tough time so the Indian Air Force gets called in to see if they can do something about it.

This show is basically an Indian version of Top Gun expanded into a series. It's pretty good. The shots of the jets are wonderful and the scenes of domestic life are not too tedious, so it's fine.

There are some very tense scenes of jet fighters zooming through canyons in the Himalayas. Sometimes these scenes get very intense, although if you look at it objectively the scenes are impossible. Jet fighters do not sideslip at 45 degrees when they are traveling at 500 knots, but the scenes are so well crafted that you get carried along emotionally. So now you are watching a scene that is simultaneously believable and unbelievable. Great stuff.

Indian Air Force MiG-21

The show focuses on the Golden Arrows squadron. They are flying MiG-21 jet fighter aircraft. They start off flying photo reconnaissance missions but because they are equipped with GPS they soon get tasked with bombing those dirty Pakistanis. It is an Indian movie after all. The show makes a big deal about altitude, and while the Himalayas are tall, the MiG can easily go much, much higher.

Specifications (MiG-21bis)
Length	50	feet
Wingspan	24	feet
Weight: 10 tons	19	tons
Maximum speed	1,350	mph
Landing speed	160	mph
Range	410	miles
Service ceiling	57,000	feet
Guns	1	internal 23 mm Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-23L autocannon with 200 rounds
Hardpoints	4	underwing
Hardpoints	1	ventral, reserved for fuel droptanks

Can't mention Kashmir without mentioning Led Zeppelin:

Led Zeppelin - Kashmir (Remaster) (Official Audio)
Led Zeppelin

Lavochkin La-9

Lavochkin La-9

I did a jigsaw puzzle of this image this afternoon, but it was watermarked with AIRLINERS.NET, and I'm not gonna post that here. Asked Google to identify it because the label on the puzzle was entirely cryptic, and Google found the same image, sans watermark, on Ebay, so that's what we have here.

I had never heard of Lavochkin before. I've heard of Antonov, Beriev, Ilyushin, MiG, Sukoi, Tupolev & Yakovlev, but not Lavochkin. The company is still in business and is kind of a big deal.

Wikipedia:

The Lavochkin La-9 (NATO reporting name Fritz) was a Soviet fighter aircraft produced shortly after World War II. It was one of the last piston engined fighters to be produced before the widespread adoption of the jet engine.

The Lavochkin La-9 descended from the La-7 which descended from the La-5. The Soviets built many of these aircraft:

Model	Year	Quantity
La-9	1946	1,600
La-7	1944	6,000
La-5	1942	10,000

Lavochkin. The Evolution of a Fighter.
KOC1

Ilyushin Il-2

Ilyushin Il-2 - Romain Hugault
Romain Hugault is a comic book artist

Wikipedia - Production

In early 1941, the Il-2 was ordered into production at four factories, and was eventually produced in greater numbers than any other military aircraft in aviation history, but by the time Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, only State Aviation Factory No. 18 at Voronezh and Factory No. 381 at Leningrad had commenced production, with 249 having been built by the time of the German attack.

Production early in the war was slow because after the German invasion the aircraft factories near Moscow and other major cities in western Russia had to be moved east of the Ural Mountains. Ilyushin and his engineers had time to reconsider production methods, and two months after the move Il-2s were again being produced. The tempo was not to Premier Stalin's liking, however, and he issued the following telegram to Shenkman and Tretyakov:

You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day, and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning. — Stalin

As a result, "the production of Shturmoviks rapidly gained speed. Stalin's notion of the Il-2 being 'like bread' to the Red Army took hold in Ilyushin's aircraft plants, and the army soon had their Shturmoviks available in quantity."

Il-2 Destroys Bridge - The PIlot
Johnny's War Stories

I think the above video is from the movie The Pilot. A Battle for Survival. It was made in  Russia in 1980, so before the collapse of the Soviet Union, so it's basically a Soviet movie. Sounds like a good story though.

Ilyushin IL-2 Sturmovik | The Flying Tank | Armored Plane of soviet russia in WW2 #sturmovik #il2
Info Cafe

I suspect the audio on this video is artificial, but the script is pretty good: coherent and plausible. Maybe a little excessive boasting about killing German tanks at Kursk, I dunno. I know that Kursk was a big battle, but I never heard much about aircraft there.

Previous Il-2 post.

10 Short Videos #6167

10 Short Videos #6167

A glass tower is growing inside this building - Domino Sugar Building in Brooklyn

You Can’t Kill the Dancing Crab Robot

May 8, 2026 - Bending steamed wood rods to make chair frames

How do you deal with excess MIG wire? The eternal battle between ease and conservation.

Would You Fly the 1956 Gyro-Boat?

THE BRIDGE AT TYRNYAUZ, Russia, collapsed by glacial mudflow

NASA Is Bringing Real Mars Wind to Earth

The vengeance of Olga of Kyiv

The Pistol That Saved Winston Churchill - Sudan 1898

Get it away from me pal - Sam Alkhatib

MiGs

Four MiG-17s
2025 Defenders of Liberty Air Show at Barksdale AF

From Wikipedia:

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 (NATO reporting name: Fresco) is a transonic fighter aircraft produced in the Soviet Union from 1952 and was operated by air forces internationally. The MiG-17 was license-built in China as the Shenyang J-5 and Poland as the PZL-Mielec Lim-6. The MiG-17 is still being used by North Korea's air force in the present day and has seen combat in the Middle East and Asia.

It wasn't used in the Korean War, but it was used in the Vietnam War. The Soviet Union built 10,000 of them. 

Pics

Reuben

New mural by Banksy

MIKOYAN MiG-27 Bahadur

Indian on the King Cruise 2025 at Louwman's, Raamsdonksveer

1978 Mom walking with her family in Salisbury, Rhodesia, carrying an Uzi

Exercise Bright Star - Egypt 1983

U.S. and Egyptian aircraft over the Pyramids during Exercise Bright Star '83
Click to embiggenate

I came across this photo while skimming the news this morning. It was at the top of a story on Geopolitics about Egypt. I glanced at it and thought 'cool, a bunch of jet fighters flying over the pyramids', but then I looked closer and realized that all of the airplanes were different. Left to right we have:

• McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom
• General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon
• Dassault Mirage 5
• Grumman F-14 Tomcat
• Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21
• Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19
• Vought F-8 Crusader
• Grumman EA-6B Growler

This photograph is phenomenal. Whoever managed to get all these aircraft to fly together and then managed to capture this photo as they flew over the pyramids deserves a medal.

The Bright Star exercises started in 1981 and are still going on every couple of years.

MiG-17

MIKOYAN MiG-17 - Carson Zabel

Shot over Camarillo, California, home of the Southern California Wing of the Confederate, er, Commemorative, Air Force. First flown in 1952, the Soviet Union built 10,000 of them. North Korea still uses them. Wikipedia article here.

 

MiG-17 - Tumbling Goose showing off his 17’s burners.

Wikipedia, as usual, has plenty to say about this antique:

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 (Russian: Микоян и Гуревич МиГ-17; NATO reporting name: Fresco) is a high-subsonic fighter aircraft produced in the Soviet Union from 1952 and was operated by air forces internationally. The MiG-17 was license-built in China as the Shenyang J-5 and Poland as the PZL-Mielec Lim-6. The MiG-17 is still being used by the North Korean air force in the present day and has seen combat in the Middle East and Asia.

The MiG-17 was an advanced modification of the MiG-15 aircraft produced by the Soviet Union during the Korean War. Production of the MiG-17 was too late for use in that conflict and was first used in the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958. While the MiG-17 was designed to shoot down slower American bombers, it showed surprising success when used by North Vietnamese pilots to combat American fighters and fighter-bombers during the Vietnam War, nearly a decade after its initial design. This was due to the MiG-17 being more agile and maneuverable than the American F-4 Phantom and F-105 Thunderchief, which were focused on speed and long range combat, as well as the fact that MiG-17 was armed with a gun, which initial models of the F-4 Phantom lacked.

I've been wanting to put together a timeline of Russian jet fighters. I have a hard time keeping all the various model numbers straight. I mean, what are we up to now? 23? 55?

MiG-27

MIKOYAN MiG-27 Bahadur (N23UB)

N29UB

MiG 29UB taxi at Bozeman, Idaho

Soviet era Fulcrum. Scramble has a good story about ownership of this aircraft. 

Pair of Fulcrums

Raptor Aviation has an ad posted offering the same aircraft for sale. Maybe it's the same aircraft. Maybe it's a different one. Maybe the post is obsolete.

First flew in the early 1980s. They built 1,600 of them. They might still making them.

Selected Specifications:

• Empty weight: 12 tons which is like 8 econoboxes
• Maximum speed: 1,500 MPH
• Guns: 1 × 30 mm Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-30-1 autocannon with 150 rounds

It's got radar and rockets, but it's the gun that got my attention. Not something you think too much in this day of rockets. Bullets do have the advantage of being super cheap.

Su-35S fires it's 30 mm GSh-30-1 autocannon
Russian Armed Forces

Russia video on Facebook: 

THE CRUSHING POWER OF THE MIGHTY GsH-30-I AUTOMATIC CANNON

The gun has a rate of fire of 1,800 rounds per minute, but the aircraft only carries 150 rounds which is only enough for five seconds. That's 30 rounds a second. I think the idea is that you get the target lined up in your sights and you let loose a burst just tenths of a second long. With the way the aircraft move and the way targets move, if you fire a single shot it's a crap shoot whether that bullet will hit the target. When you are moving, your point of aim is also moving. If you let loose a burst and your line of sight crosses the target, then there is a good chance that you will actually hit the target.

MiG-21

MiG-21

This airplane is an antique in anybody's book. First flight was in 1959.The Mozambique Air Force still had eight MiG-21s listed as operational in December 2021.

Hypersonic

A Russian MiG-31K carrying a Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missile - Russian Defence Ministry/AFP

We've been hearing about hypersonic missiles for a while (years?) now, but it's always been tests or prototypes or designs or funding. This might be the first time I've seen a picture of an operational missile. Aljazeera has the story.

MiG-21

Mig-21 facts that might surprise you
Fly with Magnar
I'm always surprised when I hear about old jet aircraft, and even more so when I hear about old Soviet aircraft. From the YouTube blurb:

First flown in 1955, the MiG-21 is the most produced supersonic airplane in the world.

MiG-25 Foxbat

This Jet Terrified the West: The MiG-25 Foxbat
Mustard

I ran a search on my blog and I found numerous posts about various MiGs, but the only post that mentioned the MiG-25 was one about the number of Iraqi aircraft the Iranians shot down. So. While I still don't have all the various MiGs straight in my head, I'm getting a better idea.

This plane, or its successor sounds like it might have the basis for the Clint Eastwood movie Firefox.

P.S. Jet aircraft - The highest current world absolute general aviation altitude record propelled aircraft is 123,520 ft set by Aleksandr Vasilyevich Fedotov in a MiG-25M on August 31, 1977.

Moscow Rules

Startup of a Russian "type 458" gyro block of a MiG-21 fighter after almost 40 years of storage
barjan82
YouTube Description:

The "type 458" gyro block (Russian: 458МКС-15-32) in combination with the AGD-1 1122A/B (Russian: АГД-1) type attitude indicator/artificial horizon is a part of the inertial navigation system used in the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 supersonic jet fighter aircraft. The same gyro block is also used on a big variety of other Russian aircraft still flying today. The shown gyro block was kept in storage for almost 40years after being rejected, this is the third startup after the storage. The current setup yet lacks the matching AGD-1 1122A/B type HSI instrument, instead the pitch indicator block (syncro resolver and AC servomotor with servo amp) of a AGB-3K type attitude indicator is wired up for operation. Power requirement of the system is 27V DC and 3x36V 400Hz AC. Steady state total power consumption of the system is around 60W off the 27V bus (with a solid state 3phase 400Hz sine-wave inverter with 80% efficiency). Video quality is rather poor as usual :)

Just the coolest thing I've seen today. The way it jerks into position and the way it takes forever to get to full speed are just very cool. Evidently they are still in use, though I think new designs all use MEMS and can fit inside your smartphone. Previous inertial navigation post here.

 

MiG-29

Polish Air Force MiG-29s by Krzysztof Kocierz

Found this image on Defence Blog. I am not sure whether it is a painting or a photograph. Krzysztof is a photographer, but the shadows and the rainbow are fantastic.

Airplane of the Day - Chengdu F-7A

Albanian Air Force Chengdu F-7A

Albania during the Cold War was nuts. Enver Hoxha was the leader (I thought it was Tito, but that was Yugoslavia). During the 1970's they acquired a bunch of MiG copies from China (Russia wasn't Communist enough for them). view from the porch has the story.

The Chengdu J-7 is a Chinese copy of the Soviet MiG-21. 

Airplane of the Day

MiG-15 at airport outside Piešťany, Slovakia

The MiG-15 first flew in 1949. It gave us trouble during the Korean War and again during the Vietnam War. North Korea, that hotbed of tried and true technology, still employs them as training aircraft. The commies built more than 18,000 of them.

Via FlightAware

Airplane of the Day - Ilyushin Il-80

Rossiya Special Flight Squadron IL-80

Thieves broke into one these aircraft and made off with some radio equipment. Two other aircraft from Russia's Rossiya Special Flight Squadron appeared here yesterday. Wikipedia has a page about the IL-80.

P.S. I belatedly realized I didn't say anything about the escort aircraft, but now, even though I did some searching I still cannot identify them. They might be MiG-35's or Sukhoi Su-30's.