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This story is from April 15, 2019

Balakot operation: If we had Rafale fighters, we would have performed even better, says IAF chief

Reiterating that the Indian Air Force outgunned the Pakistan Air Force during the Balakot strikes and the subsequent dogfight over the Line of Control in February, Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa on Monday said his force would have performed even better if the Rafale fighters had been inducted on time.
Balakot operation: If we had Rafale fighters, we would have performed even better, says IAF chief
Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa
Key Highlights
  • IAF chief said his force had “successfully” conducted the pre-dawn air strikes at the main Jaish-e-Mohammed facility at Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on February 26
  • IAF had launched precision stand-off weapons (Spice-2000 bombs) with “great accuracy” at the Balakot terror facility since it had technology on its side: B S Dhanoa
NEW DELHI: Reiterating that the Indian Air Force outgunned the Pakistan Air Force during the Balakot strikes and the subsequent dogfight over the Line of Control in February, Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa on Monday said his force would have performed even better if the Rafale fighters had been inducted on time.
The IAF chief said his force had “successfully” conducted the pre-dawn air strikes at the main Jaish-e-Mohammed facility at Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on February 26, which led to the aerial skirmish a day later after PAF launched “a riposte” with a strike package of 11 F-16s as well as 13 JF-17s and Mirage-III/Vs to bomb Indian military targets.

“Did they succeed in their objective? The answer is a clear `No’, as the attack was thwarted, while we had achieved our objective in Balakot. This is the main argument. Yes, we lost an aircraft, a MiG-21 Bison and one of our pilots was held captive (Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was later released),” said ACM Dhanoa, speaking at the Marshal of Air Force Arjan Singh centenary seminar on aerospace power here.
“But we got an aircraft too, which electronic signatures suggest was an F-16. But to shift the narrative to this air combat from not being able to achieve your military objective is obfuscating the issue, like the statements made by Pakistan after the 1965 and 1971 wars … You (Pakistan) lost half your country, for God’s sake,” he added.
ACM Dhanoa said IAF had launched precision stand-off weapons (Spice-2000 bombs) with “great accuracy” at the Balakot terror facility since it had technology on its side, and had also “come out better” in the subsequent aerial skirmish because it had upgraded its MiG-21 Bisons and Mirage-2000s.
“The results would have been further skewed in our favour had we inducted our Rafale aircraft in time,” he said, adding the proposed induction of the 36 French fighters (for Rs 59,000 crore) and five squadrons of the Russian S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems (for Rs 40,000 crore) over the next two to four years would “once again tilt the technological balance in our favour”.

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman has accused the previous UPA regime for “wasting 10 critical years” by sitting on the proposed procurement for Rafale fighters. But the Congress has alleged the 36-Rafale deal inked by the NDA government in September 2016 was vastly overpriced, violated defence procurement procedures, included no transfer of technology, and was intended to benefit the Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Defence as the “offsets partner” of the French fighter manufacturer Dassault Aviation.
The NDA government, on its part, asserts it secured a “better deal” for the 36 Rafales in terms of price, capability, equipment, delivery and maintenance than the one “notionally being negotiated” by the previous UPA regime for 126 Rafale jets under the now-scrapped MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) project.
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