IAF Balakot Strike "lessons learnt" revealed stunning deficiencies in Indian Air Force firepower system
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ISLAMABAD - An Indian Air Force report on the Balakot airstrike has pointed out faults in the India weapon system because of which the operation did not go as planned.
The report on ‘lessons learnt’ from airstrike in Pakistan highlighted both positive and negative aspects of the airstrike while admitting that there were several deviations from the plan and ‘some outright negatives’ too. Faulty Integration
As for the negatives, the report’s findings verify the claims that the indigenous integration of India’s new weapon system is flawed. The IAF has acknowledged that the software changes made by the Indian technicians to integrate new weapon systems with Mirage 2000 aircraft did not completely work.
The report also noted that the fighter fleet failed to withstand the weather conditions and had trouble with the cloud cover. Moreover, the entire weapons package (payload), apart from the Spice 2000, could not be delivered, raising questions about weapon-to-target matching.
As for the indigenously integrated weapon system, an IAF official opines, “The Balakot experience underlines integration of new weapons with platforms should be done by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) despite the cost involved.”
Notably, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute made the same assessment that the precision-guided munitions (PGMs) employed in the strike were incorrectly programmed, undermining the precision in reaching the targets.
An Indian Express report states while citing an official source that one PGM could not be delivered by the Mirage 2000 aircraft because the 35-year-old legacy aircraft had a drift in the inertial navigation system.
“It meant that there was a mismatch between the location seen by the PGM and the aircraft at the point of the delivery of the PGM, which led to it not being fired from the aircraft,” says the official.
