In a significant milestone for indigenous defence sustainment, the Indian Navy and domestic industry have successfully stabilised the performance of the MiG-29K fighter fleet’s Zhuk-ME radar, effectively resolving chronic reliability issues that had plagued the platform for over a decade.
This breakthrough follows the quiet lapse of the original Russian Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) certification in 2019.
The expiration of this vendor agreement, rather than hindering operations, inadvertently provided Indian engineers with the unrestricted access required to re-engineer and rectify the radar’s persistent faults without contractual limitations.
Leaks Confirm Scale of Historic Failures
The success of the indigenous recovery programme stands in stark contrast to the severe technical deficiencies recently brought to light by the 'Black Mirror' hacker group.Leaked internal documents from the Russian manufacturer have vindicated the Indian Navy’s long-standing complaints regarding the radar's performance.
According to the exposed files, the Zhuk-ME radar’s Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) had plummeted to a critical low of just 60 hours by mid-2017—far below the contractual benchmark of 150 hours required for carrier-borne operations.
The documents cite internal correspondence from 2018 in which the Indian Navy repeatedly flagged "unsatisfactory performance," citing frequent breakdowns of line-replaceable units (LRUs) and inconsistent tracking capabilities.
During this period, the Navy remained tethered to a sluggish Russian support ecosystem. The reliance on the OEM for diagnostics and proprietary software patches resulted in prolonged aircraft groundings and an inability to implement lasting solutions.
2019: The Turning Point
The operational landscape shifted fundamentally in 2019 when the Russian OEM certification for the Zhuk-ME was not renewed. This event effectively decoupled the Indian Navy’s maintenance roadmap from the manufacturer’s control.With the restrictive vendor protocols removed, the Indian Navy collaborated with private domestic defence electronics firms to initiate a deep-dive engineering review.
For the first time, local teams were able to dismantle the radar’s architecture, reverse-engineer critical sub-systems, and implement direct modifications.
Sources close to the programme indicate that this freedom was the decisive factor. "The lapse of the OEM certificate removed the 'black box' restrictions," stated a defence aviation official. "It allowed us to stop simply replacing faulty Russian components with identical spares and instead address the root causes of the failures."
Indigenous Engineering Solutions
The stabilisation effort involved a comprehensive overhaul of the radar’s most vulnerable sections.Indian industry partners focused on several key technical interventions:
- Thermal Management: Engineers redesigned the cooling pathways and power conditioning modules, which were found to be the primary culprits behind component degradation during high-temperature carrier deck operations.
- Hardware Upgrades: Unreliable legacy units were replaced with higher-grade indigenous electronics capable of withstanding the rigours of maritime deployment.
- Software Stabilisation: Local teams rewrote segments of the embedded software to eliminate fault loops that previously caused system crashes during sorties.
Fleet Availability Restored
The impact of these local interventions has been immediate and measurable. Naval aviation sources report that the operational availability of the Zhuk-ME radar is now significantly higher than at any point during the OEM-managed era.The frequency of faults has dropped sharply, and the ability to repair units in-country has drastically reduced turnaround times.
While the Zhuk-ME remains a mechanically scanned array radar, its newfound stability ensures it can now reliably support the MiG-29K’s training and combat deployment cycles.
The Indian Navy has secured total ownership of the system’s sustainment, ensuring that future obsolescence management can be conducted entirely within India.
This recovery effort serves as a potent case study for the wider defence sector: by breaking free from vendor-locked dependency, Indian industry has transformed a liability into a sustainable, combat-ready asset.
