KARACHI: Indian Air Force internal report revealed the Balakot Strike didnot go as per plane.
The Indian Air Forcehas finally admitted that its so-called ‘surgical’airstrike on Balakot did not go according to plan.
An IAF report on ‘lessons learnt’ – covered by *The Hindustan Times* andother Indian news outlets – has acknowledged that changes in software madeby Indian technicians to integrate new weapon systems with the Mirage 2000aircraft used to carry out the strike ‘did not completely work’.
The report follows the Indian external affairs minister’s admission that noPakistani citizens or military personnel were killed or injured in theaction. It also appears to support the Australian Strategic PolicyInstitute’s assessment that the precision-guided munitions (PGMs) used inthe strike were incorrectly programmed to fly precisely into their targets.
The IAF report criticised the indigenous skills IAF uses to integrate newweapons systems onto the aircraft it uses. “The Balakot experienceunderlines integration of new weapons with platforms should be done by theOriginal Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) despite the cost involved,” *TheHindustan Times* quoted a senior official aware of the assessment as saying.
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It admitted that that the entire weapons package carried by the IAF jetsused in the airstrike ‘was not delivered’, possibly due to changes insoftware made to integrate new weapon systems with the jets.
“One PGM did not leave the Mirage 2000 aircraft because it is a 35-year oldlegacy aircraft and there was drift in the inertial navigation system,” *TheIndian Express* quoted sources as saying. “It meant that there was amismatch between the location seen by the PGM and the aircraft at the pointof the delivery of the PGM, which led to it not being fired from theaircraft.”
The IAF report also pointed out that the IAF could have carried out better‘weapon-to-target matching’ – the IAF used Israeli-made SPICE 2000precision-guided penetration bombs over a fragmentation weapon, whichflattens structures.
