Operation Sindoor and Indian Air Force’s 100 Hours of Fury: What India’s Airstrikes in Pakistan Really Signaled

Now, it is almost a month since India started hitting targets inside Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam carnage. As the dust begins to settle on that barely 100 hours of action between the two air forces, some startling details have begun to emerge.

1. The Indian Air Force (IAF) destroyed at least, as many as nine PAF aircrafts- comprising 6 fighters, 2 AWACS, and one transport. Some very senior sources in the IAF have shared this info informally and will soon go public, with incontrovertible evidence as they always do.
2. In their first strike on the May 6, IAF hit 21 terror camps across nine locations - five in PoK and four in Pakistan. All were destroyed substantially, and with admitted casualties.
3. 11 PAF Air Bases were severely damaged in retaliation to Pakistan’s indiscriminate drone and missile attacks on India post May 6. Earlier, Pakistan’s critical Radar and Air Defence Units in Lahore and Sialkot were blasted out leaving their territory exposed.

Elaborate satellite images and multiple geo-located videos corroborate the claims made in points 2 and 3.

Reports of severe damages to the sites storing their ‘strategic assets’ have also emerged. Perhaps, we don’t know all of what we inflicted on them, or even most of it, yet. Chances are more facts will emerge with time.

Most international and neutral observers of this face-off between the IAF and PAF have concluded that it ended in a convincing and comprehensive defeat of the PAF. The professionals- the cognoscenti, even in Pakistan, know this well enough, irrespective of whether or not they acknowledge it. With social media and informed independent voices online, the truth will come out sooner than later.

But, what is even more significant is what India has tried to convey through its actions in these 100 and odd hours.

• That jihad resulting in terror attacks in India, will now have ever increasing costs and consequences for Pakistan.
• That India will not be constrained by any nuclear blackmail while inflicting such costs and consequences on Pakistan.
• That we not only have the capability but, even more crucially, now the will as well, to go up the escalation ladder, if ever needed.

Our assertions are not only very emphatic, they are also received across the border quite unambiguously. The nonchalance of their talking heads and their theatrics notwithstanding.

Some questions remain though.

And, now it is time that they be asked, even if the Operation Sindoor has not been formally called off, yet. If the tamasha at Attari could resume while the Operation Sindoor is still on, why hold back the questions. They are far more important than the referred tamasha.

We went into Operation Sindoor repeating ad nauseam -

“We are only targeting terror centres, and our actions are measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible”.

• Did we really expect Pakistan to allow us a right of passage just because “we are only targeting terror centres, and our actions are measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible”?
• Did we not know that Pakistan will respond, irrespective? They, in fact, repeatedly bragged that they would hit us.
• Did we expect Pakistan not to target our military assets just because we were not targeting theirs?

Last time, when we crossed over and bombed Balakot, their Air Defence System had an egg on their face.

This time, they knew we had BVR capability and we might not even need to crossover.

We knew that they, too, had acquired Beyond Visual Range (BVR) capability.

We also knew that mated with their Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS), their BVR capabilities acquired a lethality that seriously challenged our pilots and their platforms.

In any conflict involving the Air Force, the classic tactic is to first suppress the enemy air defence (SEAD) if not destroy (DEAD) it. Second, if not simultaneous, tactic is to neutralise the enemy’s capability to retaliate by immobilising its offensive assets. Giving up such text-book imperatives for some political fetish to look good, is anything but a “tactical error”, CDS Gen Anil Chouhan, Sir. It is virtue signaling of the most expensive kind.

On May 6, we subjected our brave air warriors to a severe jeopardy by doing neither of the two before tasking them to target the terror bases in Pakistan. And, this is not the first time.

In 1947, when Pakistan invaded Jammu and Kashmir, the then government headed by Nehru kept it ‘non-escalatory’ and did not allow our forces to target the enemy supply lines coming from across the border or to target the command and control centres in Pakistan.

This stretched the war on, for 15 months, with massive casualties. Later, a premature ceasefire caused a huge loss of territory called the PoK.

In 1962, Nehru was again ‘non-escalatory’. Among his various questionable decisions was not to allow the use of Air Force against the Chinese invasion, fearing some imaginary ‘escalation’. Denial of that obvious advantage to our armed forces too eventually contributed to severe losses of both, men and territory.

In 1999, at the Kargil War, then PM Vajpayee forbade our forces from crossing the LoC. This ‘non-escalatory’ fetish again came at a considerable cost of both men and material. The war stretched on for over two months. Among the several brave hearts we lost early in the Operation Vijay, was Sqdn Ldr Ajay Ahuja VC. We didn’t allow our air warriors to cross the LoC and punish the enemy where it would have hurt them the most.

There are some very fine examples to the contrary as well, if only we are willing to learn from them.

In 1965, Gen Harbaksh Singh crossed the IB and marched towards Lahore when Pakistan least expected India to do this. Pakistan had launched Operation Gibraltar to snatch J&K and expected us to stay engaged only in J&K. This brought a swift end to their misadventure.

In 1965 itself, when China wanted to take advantage of our engagement on the western borders, Gen Sagat Singh defied orders and chose to defend Nathu La, instead of falling back to avoid ‘escalation’. Thanks to him, we still hold Nathu La. Jelep La, which was vacated by another Div that followed the orders, continues under the Chinese control till date.

Likewise, it was Gen Sagat Singh’s ‘escalation’ in 1971 that contributed significantly to a quicker fall of Dhaka.

This time, by neither doing SEAD nor DEAD, or for that matter addressing the enemy’s offensive capability, we may have paid a huge, though eminently avoidable, price on May 6, when we offered our brave air warriors as sitting ducks to the enemy.

“Takwa Iman Jihad fisabilillah” is the Pakistan Army motto. They are the very mother of this jihadi terror we were out to punish. Imagine, we were, with a fanfare as if, being “non-military” in our campaign, to this military. We were “non-escalatory” in our assurance to an enemy who has been seriously escalating despite all the restraint on our end all these years. We were parroting “precise and proportionate” to an enemy who was, and has always been, deliberately indiscriminate and disproportionate. We saw how they targeted our temples, gurdwaras, and finally even our capital itself. Pray, why such generosity, and, at what huge risks to our brave air warriors, who gloriously plunged into the mission, regardless?

Then, we compounded that May 6 blunder by our reticence immediately after. At their dare, we ought to have thundered, both in the air as well as the airwaves. That critical 48 hours of radio silence, before we started the relentless decimation of Pakistani Air Defences and Air Bases, gave Pakistan the window to run away with the narrative of concoctions and exaggerations.

Retrieving that narrative was still possible. Our forces needed another 48 to 72 hours. For Pakistan's systematic meltdown, and also, for our political leadership to, meanwhile, extract some telling concessions. That would have settled the issue comprehensively, without any need later, for dramatic demagogy or disparate delegations to distant disinterested and dead capitals on a pointless errand.

But, yet again, with a premature ceasefire, all the hard-fought battlefield advantage was squandered for a damp squib of an end. Again, not for the first time.