ISLAMABAD – An Indian Air Force report on the Balakot airstrike has pointedout faults in the India weapon system because of which the operation didnot go as planned.
The report on ‘lessons learnt’ from airstrike in Pakistan highlighted bothpositive and negative aspects of the airstrike while admitting that therewere several deviations from the plan and ‘some outright negatives’ too.Faulty Integration
As for the negatives, the report’s findings verify the claims that theindigenous integration of India’s new weapon system is flawed. The IAF hasacknowledged that the software changes made by the Indian technicians tointegrate new weapon systems with Mirage 2000 aircraft did not completelywork.
The report also noted that the fighter fleet failed to withstand theweather conditions and had trouble with the cloud cover. Moreover, theentire weapons package (payload), apart from the Spice 2000, could not bedelivered, 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 withplatforms should be done by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)despite the cost involved.”
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Notably, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute made the same assessmentthat the precision-guided munitions (PGMs) employed in the strike wereincorrectly programmed, undermining the precision in reaching the targets.
An Indian Express report states while citing an official source that onePGM could not be delivered by the Mirage 2000 aircraft because the35-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 PGMand the aircraft at the point of the delivery of the PGM, which led to itnot being fired from the aircraft,” says the official.
