Op Sindoor delivered heavy damage in 90 hrs

WE had at least five confirmed fighter jet kills and one large aircraft, which could be either an elite aircraft or an Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft, at a distance of 300 km.So, we all know what happened: that unfortunate incident of Pahalgam. You know how we were trying to achieve some things diplomatically and, at the same time, we had to give them a befitting reply. We had also said that this time we must send the message across loud and clear to the terrorists and their leadership. So we discussed a few options and decided on those nine targets.The red dots that you see on the map were the seven targets that were very close to the border and LoC and they were to be taken out by the army with their integral weapons. And those two blue dots were the two main headquarters complexes, that is Bahawalpur and Muridke, that were to be taken out by the Indian Air Force. All of us were working together, including naval assets — their weapons were used too.The date was decided — the intervening night of May 6-7th. The date and time was based on weather, based on what patterns we were seeing across the border, of their movements and actions.We had decided to undertake our action in one go, to address all nine targets. They were all hardened structures, so we decided to go with long-range weapons. To keep ourselves safe, and restrict ourselves to attacking only terrorist targets. And minimum civilian casualties.There were some buildings where we had intelligence of their senior leadership staying, some buildings where other people stay and, of course, the main building where their congregations took place. I will show you some of the pictures of what we achieved — before and after satellite pictures. You can see the damage clearly. All adjacent buildings are fairly intact. Besides the satellite pictures, we also had a lot of input from the local media, which was giving us the inside pictures. It's all on the open net, available.I want to bring out something here. When we did Balakot, we had something similar. I have a slide on that. But we could not get anything from inside and it became a big issue; trying to tell our own people as to what we have achieved. This time we had human intelligence, so we had a very clear picture of the inside — there has been huge damage. I'm very happy that this time we were able to take care of that ghost of Balakot and tell the world what we achieved.Much damage was done on the other seven targets by the Army. Once we were confident about our achievement, a message was sent to their DGMO by our DGMO — that we had no intent to strike military targets; our objective was only to strike terrorist infrastructure, and take revenge for Pahalgam. And that we can call it off here. But they, unfortunately, did not agree. They said: "Aap ne humain mara hai, ab hum marenge, phir dekhenge, phir baat karenge."We continued to be cautious. We knew they would do something. So, the 7th-8th night and 8th-9th night, those two nights of May, a lot of munitions, drones, small-scale weapons — intended to saturate our systems at our airfields and army installations —were spotted. Of course, that created a little bit of panic in the public. They started spotting even low-earth orbit satellites and reporting them as drones! It was becoming very difficult to filter out, but our local commanders did exceptionally well.They took charge and neutralised many drones using our own anti-drone systems and anti-aircraft guns. Our anti-drone systems really worked very well. We survived those attacks without any damage.We got an intelligence report on May 9th evening that they are planning something big and the next 48 hours are very critical. We decided that if they attack our military installations, we will reply with the military attacking their installations. We took the call that since they were mostly attacking us by air force and our air force bases are under threat, we should respond without waiting. Sure enough, their aircraft tried to penetrate our defences.Our air defence systems did a wonderful job. The S400 system has been a game-changer. The range of that system ensured that they were not able to use their long-range bombs.In Balakot, if you remember, some bombs had fallen very close to the Army area, but this time since we were ready to use our long-range surface-to-air guided weapons, they were deterred. Initially, we found a very massive buildup taking place. But once the first missile was fired from our side from the ground, we certainly found a dissipation of that buildup.On May 9-10th night, there were a large number of attacks. Our airfields in Adampur, Srinagar, Awantipur took the brunt. They tried to penetrate various classes of drones, including weaponised ones. We were able to neutralise most of their weapons.That night we decided we would go in no holds barred. Once again, it was not to attack anything in particular, but to give them that feeling, that look, we can attack you deep inside at will wherever we want to.Like this command and control centre at Nur Khan base or at Raheem Yar Khan base — the attacks were based on specific intelligence. As far as the Sukkur airfield is concerned, we attacked their UAV hangar and a radar site. You have the visuals available here. This is the hangar which is been flattened and this is the radar site before and after. An AEW&C hangar was attacked and here we have a very clear hint that there was an aircraft inside when this attack took place.Sargodha, we've grown up in our Air Force dreaming about days like this, that someday, we'll get a chance to go there. And so it just happened that I got my chance just before I retired. So, we attacked the airfield… not the southern installations because we thought that may lead to unnecessary escalation.This last slide is on the Jacobabad airfield. Here's an F-16 hangar, an open source photograph which shows that one half of the hanger is gone and I'm sure there were some aircraft inside which have got damaged there.So, if I can just sum it up. We were able to get at least two command and control centres in Murid and Chaklala. We attacker three hangars — the Sukkur UAV hangar, the Bhulari AEW&C hangar and the Jacobabad F-16 hangar. We have indications of at least one aircraft seen in that AEW&C hangar and a few F-16s which were under maintenance there.Besides, there are a large number of UAVs, drones and missiles which have fallen in our territory. We have recovered a lot of wreckage which is now being studied so that we can make out where they were launched from, what route they followed, what kind of systems they have.So, I can say that this was more of a high-tech war and in about 88-90 hours, we were able to achieve so much damage that it was very clear that if they continue, they will only pay more and more.That’s when they sent a message through their DGMO "ki hum baat karna chahte hain", which was accepted from our side — a decision taken at the highest level.What were the reasons for our success? There was very clear political will, very clear directions which were given to us without any kind of restrictions. We, the forces, decided what would be our rules of engagement. We decided the escalation ladder we wanted to ride on. We decided how we wanted to control the escalation. Full freedom was given to us to plan and execute.There was full synchronisation between the forces, between all four of us — the CDS and the three chiefs.Excerpted from the 16th edition of Air Chief Marshal LM Katre Memorial Lecture delivered at HAL, Bengaluru, on August 9, 2025.

Op Sindoor delivered heavy damage in 90 hrs

Air Chief Marshal AP Singh

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