Flying Coffins and Broken Systems: The F-7 Disaster in Bangladesh
On July 21, an FT-7BGI trainer from the Bangladesh Air Force crashed through the roof of a school in Uttara, Dhaka, killing its pilot and 30 other people, most of them children. It was the deadliest aviation disaster the capital has ever seen, and yet it was utterly predictable.
The Bangladesh Air Force (BAF) has been plagued by crashes for decades. Since the early 1990s, at least 27 crashes have claimed military and civilian lives, including seven involving the Chinese-made fighters like the F-7. Each time, officials mumble the same line: 'technical failure,' as if bad luck, not bad governance, keeps sending jets into homes, fields, and now classrooms.
Those excuses are a shield for a deeper rot. Even the 'newer' F-7 models bought under the now-fugitive former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2013 are derivatives of a 1960s Soviet design and notorious for their poor safety record. Privately, BAF personnel concede the obvious: these jets are obsolete, dangerous, and costly to keep in the air. Publicly, senior officials shift the blame to urban density, pilot error, or technical malfunctions. What they never confront is the corrupt procurement system and cynical budgeting that keep these flying coffins in service.
Bangladesh's defense budget has ostensibly ballooned by 123 percent since 2009. Yet recent cuts leave just $9 billion earmarked for actual procurement. That number looks tiny set against the colossal sums quietly diverted elsewhere. The budgeting system is engineered less to build capability than to buy loyalty. Parliamentary scrutiny is almost nonexistent. 'National security' is the magic phrase used to turn off the lights and lock the ledger.
Transparency International rates Bangladesh as a 'very high' risk for defense corruption. On the ground, that means padded maintenance contracts, ghost repairs, and 'service' budgets used as personal ATMs.
Over 55 years after independence, the armed forces have grown richer but not stronger. During the past decade and a half, money has flowed into cantonments and military-run colleges. Outdated platforms – tanks, jets, and vehicles – are snapped up from friendly regimes willing to grease palms. The result is a patronage-heavy bureaucratic-military complex that prioritizes consumption over combat readiness.
The famous Al Jazeera documentary 'All the Prime Minister's Men' pulled the curtain back on this system: former Army Chief Gen. Aziz Ahmed allegedly shielded fugitive brothers and ran procurement through fronts. Hasina's security adviser, Maj. Gen. Tarique Ahmed Siddique purportedly turned elite units into personal enforcement squads while steering deals worth thousands of crores. Ex-Air Force Chief Air Marshal Sheikh Abdul Hannan is accused of embezzling roughly 300 million takas ($2.45 million) – nearly a quarter of the service's budget – by bulldozing usable buildings for profit, and laundering funds abroad. These are not random bad apples. This is the orchard.
A vicious cycle sustains the same issues that caused the latest fatal crash. Old aircraft break down and require frequent maintenance. Maintenance contracts generate steady streams of cash, ideal for siphoning by senior officials. Bangladesh still flies roughly 40 F-7s long retired elsewhere. Procurement of truly modern aircraft remains sluggish, politicized, and graft-ridden, because a new jet with a warranty doesn't leak money like a 40-year-old airframe.
When the state does try to buy big, corruption nests at the top. A 1999 MiG-29 deal – dogged by allegations of bribery involving Hasina – and a naval frigate purchase worth over $100 million in the 1990s are reminders that strategic acquisitions have often doubled as elite enrichment schemes. The Directorate General of Defense Procurement reportedly funnels inflated contracts to military-owned conglomerates like Sena Kalyan Sangstha and the Army Welfare Trust. What began as welfare institutions now sprawl across banking, insurance, real estate, and manufacturing – perfect shells for over-billing and under-delivering.
Whistleblowers are not just ignored; they are punished. A Bangladeshi general was recently dismissed after exposing graft in procurement. The culture of impunity devours anyone who threatens the racket.
Another quieter allegation haunts the country's strategic credibility: Hasina kept the arsenal mediocre so as not to upset New Delhi and keep the bilateral relations manageable. If true, it means the state is literally trading away the safety of its pilots – and its schoolchildren – to avoid bruising a neighbor's ego.
Inside the services, that logic has bred a corrosive ethos. Officers chase land deals, business stakes, and perks; professionalism is an afterthought. In the Air Force, that means pilots strapping into relics held together by bribes and prayers. The price of this degeneracy is often paid by the young: the pilot with everything to prove, the child sitting in a classroom beneath a doomed flight path.
Bangladesh does not need another commission of inquiry or another promise to 'review procedures.' It needs a to open the budgetary black box. Start with full parliamentary oversight of defense spending, line-item transparency, and independent external audits for every maintenance contract. Ban single-source procurement, publish tender results, and criminalize undisclosed conflicts of interest. Break the monopoly of military-owned conglomerates over defense deals. Protect whistleblowers with ironclad legal shields – and prosecute the predators, not the messengers.
Most of all, the interim government – and whatever elected authority follows – must purge the armed forces of the mafioso hangovers from the Hasina era and build a genuinely professional, nonpartisan military. That means modern hardware bought for performance, not payoffs; it means safety and training prioritized over stipends and shopping malls. None of this is easy, but all of it is necessary.
Without real accountability, the next 'technical failure' is foreordained: it just lacks a date and GPS coordinates. Officials will trot out the same limp statements, promise the same 'thorough investigations,' and hope the public moves on. Bangladesh can no longer afford to repeat that cycle.
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