Revisiting Operation Swift Retort

February 27, 2019 will surely go down in the epoch of Pakistan and its Air Force (PAF) as a red-letter Day. On this day, Pakistan retorted swiftly to a failed Indian Air Force (IAF) surgical strike at Balakot, badly bruising the Indian ego and showing the world what damage a smaller, but hard hitting and determined air force can incur against a numerically and technically superior air power.

Three years have passed and much has been said and written on this stellar performance by PAF, but it is time that the background of this event is revisited. It is to PAF’s credit that in February 2019, only a few days after the February 26 Indian Air Force Operation Bandar (codename for the attack on Balakot) and PAF’s riposte the next morning, a number of former Air Chiefs, veterans and defense analysts including this scribe were invited to the Air Headquarters and briefed by the Air Chief on Operation Swift Retort. It was heartening to note that he attributed the victory to the will of Allah, rigorous training and teamwork of all those who participated.

Readers may recall that on February 14, 2019, in a false flag operation, (a fact inadvertently confessed by Indian TV anchor Arnab Goswami), 40 Indian CPRF personnel were killed at Pulwama. Blaming Pakistan for the alleged attack, India launched a surgical strike on the night of February 26, deploying one dozen Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft— equipped with Israeli SPICE air-to-ground precision guided munitions—targeted an alleged terror training center at Balakot. In their panic and fear of being intercepted by PAF fighters, the Indian pilots dumped their munitions and beat a hasty retreat, causing no damage apart from a few pine trees.

The next morning, after assessing that IAF had failed to cause any damage, PAF unleashed Operation Swift Retort to send a clear message to India, targeting multiple locations in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) but deliberately dropped their payload off the target sites to avoid any human casualty. When IAF interceptors tried to retaliate, they were trapped and in the melee, two IAF fighter aircraft were shot down by PAF. A MiG-21 and SU-30 (Sukhói-30MKI). The debris of the SU-30 fell in IOK and its pilot was killed. The MiG-21 pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was captured alive, but later returned as a gesture of goodwill.

On the same day IAF shot down its own Mi-17 helicopter with SPYDER air defense system killing six Air Force personnel and one civilian in a frenzy of confusion. Later, two Indian officers were court martialed for their faux-pas. India claimed that Wing Commander Abhinandan shot down a Pakistani F-16 Fighting Falcon before he was downed and awarded him a gallantry award Vir Chakra for his imaginary kill. Despite insistence, India failed to provide any proof of shooting down an F-16, but US specialists who visited Pakistan carried out an inventory check, finding all PAF F-16s intact while the media was shown the missile pods of Abhinandan’s MiG-21 with not a single missile having been fired.

It is another matter that Narendra Modi has fully exploited the February 26/27 events, boasting that Pakistan had been taught a lesson for the alleged Pulwama “terror attack”, with 350 jihadis being eliminated in Balakot and shooting down a state-of-the-art Pakistani F-16. Building on his plethora of lies, Modi scored a decisive victory in the May 2019 polls. He did rue that India would have done better if the latest Rafale fighter aircraft purchased from France had been inducted on time. In other words, Modi was lamenting that if India had acquired the Rafale before Operation Bandar, the result would have been different. Indian defence experts should have questioned that with 272 Sukhoi SU-30MKI, a very potent multirole fighter in its inventory, India had no excuse to show the disarray and lack of qualitative application of airpower which it did.

India has signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) pact with the United States and Washington DC’s selective use of CAATSA sanctions, exempting India from it, have changed the conventional balance. The international community needs to be cognizant of the tilting imbalance of conventionality in the region which, coupled with the irrational political behaviour of our eastern neighbour, could lead to conflicts. Judging from the complete lack of coordination and confusion displayed by IAF on February 27, the integration of Rafale and India’s diverse aggressive platforms with its air defence system comprising AWACs, wide array of ground radars and Electronic Warfare podia will take some time. Meanwhile, Rafale will be offset by PAF’s acquisition of Chinese J-10C fighter aircraft.

It is commendable that Pakistan Air Force has always compensated for the technical and numerical superiority of the adversary through hard training, adoption of sound strategy and optimum utilization of scarce resources.

The writer is a former Group Captain PAF and an author