Glorious History of Pakistan Air Force: Indian Air Force always licked wounds inflicted by Pakistan Air Force, confirms Group Captain Sultan Mahmood Hali
By Zafar Mahmood Sheikh
“India is historically a coward enemy of Pakistan and she always tries to take benefit of dark velvet nights to intrude into Pakistan but always had faced wrath of Pakistan Air Force, Pakistan Army and Pakistani Nation and ran away from failed action with licking wounds”.
This was expressed by Group Captain (Retired), Sultan Mahmood Hali in an exclusive interview with Dispatch News Desk (DND) News Agency in reference to remember heroic action of Pakistan Air Force which gave another historic defeat to Indian Air Force which lost its two fighter jets in a dogfight when it (Indian Air Force) dared to reenter Pakistani boundaries on the morning of on February 27, 2019.
Sultan Mahmood Hali who is a renewed strategic expert, analyst, writer of several books, in his interview to senior journalist Zafar Mahmood Sheikh for DND News Agency said that Pakistan Air Force (PAF) is unmatchable air force not only in the region rather in the whole world.
Following is important points shared by Sultan Mahmood Hali with DND News Agency.
Sultan Mahmood Hali says:
India was in deep trouble as it was going to hold general elections in May 2019; however, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had done nothing during his previous tenure; therefore, he had a slim chance of getting re-elected so he resorted to a false flag operation on February 14, 2018 in Pulwama and straight away blamed Pakistan. On the contrary, Pakistan had ample evidence to show that it was a choreographed and self-orchestrated plan to blame Pakistan.
The matter did not end here because Modi wanted to create a high drama not only to raise morale of his people but also to make himself sellable to the Indian masses that he was a mighty leader who had taught Pakistan a lesson.
So, on the evening of 26th February 2019, it was decided by the Indians to launch a surgical strike. It was apparently a very bold action because 12 Mirage 2000 of the Indian Air Force (IAF) intruded into the Pakistani territory crossing the Line of Control (LoC) and reached Balakot, a town in Mansehra District of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The Pakistan Air force (PAF) was not sleeping so by the time our fighters reached there, the Indian aircrafts plunged into the panic and dropped their payloads that included Israeli-made Spice 2000 Air to Surface Missiles, so Israel must also take into consideration that Indian pilots missed every target with their accurate Spice 2000 Missile and fled.
The Indian misadventure triggered an anger in Pakistan as how its enemy dared to cross the border in the darkness of the night and violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.
The government of Pakistan under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan decided to take a retaliatory action in broad day light the very next day on 27th February 2019. By the way, India had claimed to have killed 350 so called Jihadis of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) by destroying the Jihadi training camp but actually they failed to harm not even a single soul apart from destroying a few pine trees.
In fact, it turned out to be a failed operation because there was no training camp over there; rather, in the near vicinity there was a small local village madrassa (religious seminary) which was also missed by the Indian pilots. However, Pakistan gave a befitting response and left Indians in a state of shock on 27th February. Its response was a total surprise for the Indians who had already been trapped into false element of grandeur that they are superior to Pakistan.
The fact is that in 1965 and 1971 Pak-India wars, despite the numerical superiority of IAF over Pakistan Air Force, the latter subjugated its arch-rival. In East Pakistan where one PAF Squadron had to face 10 Indian Squadrons, yet they fought bravely till the runways at the Dhaka airport were bombed and operations had to be ceased.
The Squadron leaders Sarfraz Rafiqui (Shaheed), Alauddin (Shaheed) & Munir-ud-Din Ahmed (Shaheed), and the Flight Lieutenant Younus Hassan (Shaheed) etc all are the proud heroes of PAF. Carrying the same legacy of those martyrs, the PAF pilots on 27th February targeted the Command Headquarters across the LoC and designated the targets with laser designators. It means that it highlights the target with laser designators and when missiles are being fired they follow the path which strike the designated target accurately and precisely.
The PAF pilots locked and designated nine important targets but being a peace loving person, the Prime Minister of Pakistan did not want the escalation and issues the orders that pilots first fix the targets and then strike uninhabited adjacent football field. The PAF proved this claim with the release of the videos made by the fighters that shocked the entire Indian army.
The PAF Mirages then lured the shocked-in-disbelief IAF interceptors who crossed the LoC where a fresh batch of PAF fighter aircraft pounced on the IAF intruders. The PAF Shaheens locked on to six IAF intruders but the prime minister, who wanted to only teach the Indians a lesson but not escalate the tension, had given clearance to shoot down only two IAF fighter aircrafts. Being a disciplined force, the PAF complied and shot down an IAF MiG-21 and captured its pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan alive. We also shot down an IAF SU 30 which was one of the superiors most in the inventory of IAF. Its wreckage fell in the Indian Occupied Kashmir and its pilot did not survive.
Pakistan thus achieved a moral ascendancy over India. In exasperation, the Indian leaders made a false claim of shooting down a PAF F-16, which was proved wrong as even Americans after an inquiry declared that all PAF F-16 planes were intact and Indian claim was proved to be fabricated. We achieved the moral, political and military ascendancy, and gave them a loud and clear message and that’s why Modi was squirming that “I wish we had the latest French Rafale fighter aircraft. We would have done this and that”. But politically Modi achieved his target because with a pack of lies through the Indian media, he managed to convince the Indian masses that he alone can tackle Pakistan and eventually sealed the victory in general elections.
Despite being a larger air force, IAF had totally underestimated Pakistan and presumed that PAF would be dealt a blow on 26th February and probably it would not retaliate. However, that didn’t happen and we handed them a humiliating defeat that in their hearts, Indians have now realized that Pakistan Air Force cannot be taken for granted. This realization has forced the Indian defence planners to rewrite their war books and revisit their tactical & strategic plans. They have realized that PAF despite being smaller in size and lacking in the number of aircrafts, imbibed with the zeal to fight, the training its pilots receive and above all the spirit of jihad they have, IAF is no match to PAF.
What we did on the 27th of February is that the Indians now know it that PAF has achieved the local air superiority over their force. It is a vagary of war that in that just one week, Indians lost seven fighter aircrafts and a helicopter with nine senior military personnel on board which was shot down by their air defence system, which is a big blow to any air force. We directly shot down two of their aircrafts, repulsed their attack and arrested their pilot but yet that with the help of photographs, satellite images and bunch of lies like showing a debris of a missile claiming to be the wreckage of a Pakistani F-16 and also showing an engine claiming to be a F-16 engine, Indians circulated fabricated stories but all ended up as baseless. Even Indian aviation experts said that the said engine was of MiG-21. Likewise the international aviation experts also released a satellite picture of their so-called targets proving that the so-called madrassa claimed to be a militants training camp hadn’t been damaged at all. The Indian lies were exposed and American experts came to Pakistan, and after carrying out a physical count as well as inquiry, confirmed that not a single F-16 was missing or shot down.
The saner elements in the Indian society and some of the sensible part of the Indian media are cognizant of the failures of the Modi government. They accept that India is passing through a very bad patch. The Indian indigenous production is a disaster and its Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) is a failure. Some classic examples of India’s R&D failures, which have reached the public domain, are the Arjun tank, Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas, INSAS rifle, Saras, Kaveri, Akash, Nag, and Indra Radar, while numerous others have been brushed under the carpet. Its light combat aircraft Tejas has been under manufacture for the last 35 years and is obsolete even before its induction. IAF was planning to replace the MiG 21 with the Tejas but that had so many flaws that they did not succeed. Contrarily we started the JF-17 thunder program much later than the Tejas program and luckily JF-17 thunder has been inducted into PAF. We have now block two of JF-17 and it’s slowly being manufactured.
The other aspect was Rafale which unfortunately for India became a bone of contention because it was disclosed that there was a lot of corruption and Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself was involved in accepting bribes for Rafale deal which once exposed cause a bad omen and a bad eye on the Indian prime minister himself. That’s why the French also withdrew, although at the moment the induction has begun and it will take time but it is not the gun that matters but it’s the man behind the gun.
You will see that Indians are bad losers and they always make false claims which eventually proved to be wrong. For example, on 13th December 2001 they staged a false flag operation on the Indian Parliament in which 13 people were killed and they alleged that Pakistan was behind the attack. They arrested a totally innocent person from Sri Nagar, Afzal Guru, tried him on flimsy evidence, convicted him and hanged him. Their continued lies and flawed justice system was badly exposed that even Indians like Arundhati Roy and others also raised objections.
Using the December 13 attack on its Parliament, India amassed its troops on Pakistan’s borders to carry out an attack but Pakistan swiftly redeployed its army, navy and air force which deterred the Indians. After 11 months of being in eyeball to eyeball position, Indians blinked first because they could not sustain the huge expenses, and withdrew.
They learnt a lesson from that and devised a Cold Start Strategy, under which they established strategic attack forces which were meant to be always ready to attack Pakistan without giving its neighbour the time to redeploy in counteroffensive mode. Pakistan nullified the Indian Cold Start Strategy by developing the tactical nuclear weapon-TNWs, and the Cold Start Strategy has now been dumped into the cold storage. The same goes with the Indian claims of hypersonic and transonic, and much-talked about space age technology, they tried to send a mission to moon but all those efforts were failed. Lately they had an Agni-III missile that is supposed to be very much hyped and recently having been inducted into the Indian army and when they randomly picked from the army inventory for the test, it failed. The Indian defence planers are aghast that given the Pak-India hostilities, if India had engaged in a war with Pakistan and used the Agni-III missile; instead of hitting the enemy, the Agni-III with ‘nuclear capability’ would have fallen somewhere in India only. This incident comes off as a stark reality check for India, and it will have to check its jingoism.
