Tentara Nasional Indonesia - Angkatan Udara yearly anniversary

If budget permits, and the commander-in-chief of the Air Force feels like it, the Indonesian Air Force yearly showcases its assets over Jakarta. In a spur of the moment decision, one of our Aviagraphers took a last minute flight to witness the proceedings.

In recent years, the TNI-AU has seriously rejuvenated its fleet. We follow the path that aspiring pilots do. So, first up is the Grob 120TP, a very potent turboprop training aircraft. It enables the air force to spend less hours on bigger and more expensive aircraft.

After the Grob, the KT-1B is the next aircraft in the syllabus. These particular ones are obviously from the aerial demonstration team, "Jupiters". Blue smoke is used as can be seen by the smudged forward fuselage of aircraft LD-0114.

Another Korean-built aircraft used for both training and close air support is the T-50i. You can clearly appreciate its F-16 lineage from these semi-belly shots. And also that the weather was quite murky and smoggy. The blue/yellow colours are worn by aerial demonstration team Blue Eagles that belongs to Skadron Udara 15.

Over the years, the Indonesians operated quite a number of Hawks starting with twenty Hawk Mk.T53s in the early 80s. They were superseded by 8 long-nosed Hawk Mk.109, like TL-0112 seen left, and 32 single-seat fat-nosed Hawk Mk.209, like TL-0222 seen right. Both of these are operated by Skadron Udara 1 from Pontianak in West-Kalimantan (the former Borneo.)

Although the airframes have already clocked quite some hours, the F-16C is relatively new to the TNI-AU with deliveries from the USA starting in 2014 after receiving many updates. Seen here is TS-1625, the first of twenty single seat aircraft and 4 duals to be received.

But mightiest and most impressive asset is of course the Su-27/30. We opened our report with a Su-30MK-2, eleven of which were delivered, and we finish with one of the 5 Su-27SKMs, TS-2704.