In a first, IAF video shows S-400 in action

The Indian Air Force on Thursday released the first-ever video showing an S-400 air defence missile system firing away, and, in an obvious reference to Operation Sindoor, tagged the missile in flight as having conducted the "longest-ever air kill recorded in military history".

The Russian-origin system played a key role in Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in May last year and brought down a Pakistan air force plane some 300 km away inside Pakistan's territory.

"Enemy may be out of reach, but is never out of sight" said the IAF video put out on Thursday. It also has a radar image showing an approaching jet that is picked up by the radar and that activates the air-defence mechanism.

The video of the missiles is not from the operation, but is part of the promotions for the upcoming exercise Vayu Shakti scheduled to be conducted on February 27 in Rajasthan. In October last year, IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal AP Singh had said IAF destroyed or damaged at least a dozen planes of Pakistan during the operation.

Counting the IAF strikes, he had said then “we have clear evidence of a long-range hit that was almost 300 km away. It happened to be a PAF signal intelligence plane along with that five hi-tech fighters between the F-16 and the J-17 ( Chinese) class, is what our system tells us”.

The strikes in air were done using the Russian S-400 air defence system, the IAF Chief had hinted calling it the newly inducted long-rang surface-to-air missile. Mentioning, the S-400 missiles he had said “the long range SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) that we have procured recently and operationalised, that again turned the tables on them. We could look deep inside their territory. We could make sure that they were not able to operate even within their territory to a certain distance”.