To hear Indian officials tell it, a war with Pakistan looks dangerously close to beginning. Indian officials claimed an attack of a JeM base in Pakistani territory, and claimed to have killed over 300 people in the strike.
That’d be a huge deal, but is it true? Not to hear Pakistani officials tell it. The Pakistani government initially dismissed the report, saying they have no sign of any casualties. As they elaborated, a narrative started to take shape.
Pakistan’s Air Force says an Indian fighter jet did intrude into their airspace early Tuesday morning, but that the PAF ultimately repelled the plane. The Indian plane fled back to India, but did drop its explosives on the way out.
Which seems to be in keeping with the Pakistani report that instead of India attacking a JeM base, they hit nothing in particular. Air Force officials say that there were no apparent casualties, and no damage apart from some pine trees that got bombed. Locals claimed one civilian was wounded, and a house was damaged, with strikes leaving four craters.
This suggests that India may have gotten their plane repelled and tried to get out in front of what would’ve been an embarrassing story by claiming the attack was a success. India’s media tried to back this report, though the putative video of the attack turned out to be a three-year-old video of Pakistan’s own Air Force flying over Islamabad.
While this doesn’t necessarily preclude India trying to further escalate this conflict, or Pakistan retaliating for that matter, what appears to have happened so far appears a lot less serious than the initial reports suggested.
Well somebody is lying. Actually a good thing since India did no damage (acc some sources) no need to respond, so no nuclear war.
Yesterday Modi claimed that the Indian Air Force bombed Pakistan and “300 terrorists were killed”.
Only imbeciles will believe this.
As someone who worked in the Indian air force for 5 years I know what a lot of lies officialdom spouts, so I dismiss both sides’ claims. But especially the “300 terrorists killed” was such a blatant lie (were they lined up to be bombed?) that I automatically rejected it. The Pakistani claim may or may not be the truth but the Indian one definitely isn’t.
In the war of 1971 Indian claims were 45 Indian and 94 Pakistani aircraft destroyed. Pakistani claims were the reverse, approximately 30 Pakistani and 120 Indian (this was backed up by Amerikastani air force general Charles Yeager who claimed to have examined wreckage on the battlefield). When I was in the air force I repeatedly tried to find out the exact figure. This was in around 2003 so you’d think they would be able to tell me. But no, the figure seemed to be a state secret. I got absolutely no answers, not even a confirmation of the 45:94 one.
Is Pakistan’s anti-aircraft defense American or Russian?
Mostly Chinese. Some from the world (European) market. The Chinese systems are of course mostly very similar to Russian, but made in China, a probably a bit different.
Different, as in not quite as good. But good enough in this case.