Three months after Operation Sindoor, Air Chief Marshal A P Singh revealed at a memorial lecture in Bengaluru that five Pakistani aircraft had been destroyed.
He said “We have at least five fighters confirmed kills and one large aircraft, which could be either an ELINT aircraft or an AEW&C aircraft which was taken on at a distance of about 300 km. This is actually the largest ever surface-to-air kill that we can talk about.”
Other damage inflicted on the Pakistani Air Force was at Jacobabad airfield where there is an F-16 hangar.
“One half of the hangar is gone,” he said, “and I’m sure there were some aircraft inside which got damaged. We were able to get at least two command and control centres like Murid and Chaklala, at least six radars, some of them big, some of them small.”
“We have an indication of at least one AEW&C in that hangar and one F-16, which were under maintenance there,” he added.
The air chief’s briefing fills some of the knowledge gaps and helps build a picture of the scale and intensity of the Indian attack. But the question arises, why did it take so long to reveal what is clearly major damage inflicted on the Pakistani military during Operation Sindoor?
The air chief made his remarks with supporting pictorial and video evidence at the memorial lecture for the late Air Chief Marshal LM Katre. Perhaps it has taken that much time to collate information about Pakistani losses and estimate the damage India inflicted.
He described the Russia-supplied S-400 air defence system as a game-changer.
“The range of that system kept their aircraft away from weapons like the long range glide bombs that they have. They have not been able to use any of those because they have not been able to penetrate the (air defence) system.”
Two more regiments of the S-400 are expected to be delivered next year, which would help the air force fill up any current gaps in its air defence coverage.
