Continuing from my post on Op Sindoor yesterday:
Wing. Cdr. Arijit Ghosh Writes
Posted on May 19
This conflict has shown us the capability of modern standoff Precision Guided Munitions, fired from distant delivery platforms, sometimes from as far as 400 kms away. With both sides claiming to have shot down enemy aircraft in their own airspace, from across the border with Air Defence Systems that have a range of upto 400 kms, in the case of the Russian S-400s.
The incoming drone and missile attacks have replaced the night time air raids of earlier wars when attacking aircraft would actually come over their targets in enemy airspace, to release their bombs in daring low level bomb runs, amidst wailing air raid sirens and blackouts. Even in the 2019 Balakot raid, our aircraft had to cross over, but today they can do all that from the safety, if it can be called that, of their own airspace.
And it has almost done away with another fact of life from previous wars…the POWs, the Prisoners of War. We released 93000 of them after the 1971 war, but in the wars of today and of the future, there won’t be any because no one would be crossing over, in most scenarios.
A lot of the erstwhile anti aircraft gunfire has now been replaced by SAMs, the surface to Air missiles fired by the Air Defence batteries, which are routinely taking down enemy drones and missiles, even when the response time is sometimes counted in a few heartbeats.
That is the biggest change that this conflict has showcased, from traditional warfare as we have known it till now. With its overwhelming reliance on advanced technology and AI, much of it homegrown in the DRDO and ISRO labs in our case, it has been fought by both adversaries from their own side of the lines.
And that is how it is always going to be, in the days to come!
So it’s out in the open now! The answer to the question everyone has been asking, on whether the IAF lost a fighter jet , or more, in Op Sindoor.
Posted on June 1
With the CDS apparently admitting to one such loss , in an interview to an overseas anchor yesterday.
The fact is, the IAF had never denied it in the first place.
The DG Air Operations, Air Marshal Bharti had earlier stated at a Press Briefing, that losses were intrinsic to military operations and were therefore, by implication , not a big deal, so long as the objectives were achieved.
The CDS in his interview on Saturday, said much the same thing, adding that what is important is, did we learn our lessons from the loss, did we amend and adapt our strategies according to the battle scenario, and did we then go on to hit the enemy hard and bring him down to his knees, begging for a cessation of hostilities?
The world already knows the answer to those questions!
And I am reminded of a similar scenario from an earlier conflict, almost exactly twenty six years ago in the skies over Kargil, when the IAF lost two fighter aircraft, a MiG-27 and a MiG-21, and a Mi-17 helicopter in the first two days of Air Operations.
Leading to much jubilation in the enemy camp, who thought they had knocked out the Indian Air Force!
Similar to Pakistani claims this time too.
And then came the blasting to smithereens, of their prime logistics support base at Muntho Dalo and the Command Centre at Tiger Hill, which was hit with pinpoint accuracy by Mirages, using the first ever precision guided bomb fired by the IAF!
And that was the beginning of the end of THAT incursion, which the Pakistan establishment still denies it had any hand in!
Just as it stays deafeningly quiet on what really prompted them to beg for a ceasefire in less than four days this time!
