Defence Establishment Has Evidence Of Air Strikes In Balakot In Terms Of SAR Imagery

After the Pulwama terror attack, India’s foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale announced on Tuesday that in a “non-military, pre-emptive” strike India had targeted one of the major Jaish-e-Mohammed camps in Balakot.

While Pakistan refused to acknowledge that India had hit any terror camp whatsoever, local media reports cited government officials who determined a casualty rate of around 200 to 300 terrorists.

Pakistan shared pictures on its twitter handle saying that India had only dropped ‘payload’ in open areas that destroyed nothing but pine trees. Infact, Reuters reported on Friday that Pakistan even plans to lodge a complaint against India at the United Nations, accusing it of “eco-terrorism” over air strikes that damaged their trees.

Photo: Reuters/Damaged trees in Jaba village, Pakistan after their officials refuse to acknowledge that India destroyed one of the JeM training camps in Balakot

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At the February 28 briefing, IAF assistant chief of air staff (space and operations) R G K Kapoor said it would be premature to say the number of fatalities inflicted on the camp but the government had got the results it needed. He added that it was upto the government and higher leadership as to when and how to give the evidence or not.

Since then people started questioning the credibility of the strikes with many even wondering if they were carried out only for public approval. However, the Indian defence establishment said on Friday that they had suffice evidence to show that they had effectively destroyed the JeM’s terror training facility in Balakot.

A top government official even told The Indian Express that IAF had hit the four buildings it had targeted inside the campus of Madrasa Taleem-ul-Quran at Balakot. He went onto say that due to technical intelligence and ground intelligence limitations at the moment made any assessment of terrorists killed ‘purely speculative’.

Photo: Reuters

Intelligence Agencies Have Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Images As Evidence

However, the defence establishment asserted that they had evidence in the form of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) pictures to put rest to all speculations regarding the strikes. Four buildings that were recognised as targets were hit by five S-2000 precision-guided munition (PGM) fired from IAF’s Mirage-2000 fighter jets.

An official told TOI, “The SAR films clearly show before and after pictures of the intended targets being hit. Its up to the government whether it wants to release them or not. Pakistan, of course, has also worked swiftly to repair the damage to the site.”

The Sukhoi-30MKIs, which accompanied the Mirage-2000s for ‘air defence’, do have SARs for high-resolution ground mapping with the capability to penetrate clouds.

Photo: Reuters/Mirage 2000

The Mirage 2000s had electro-optical sensors but could not have captured images because of the cloudy weather during pre-dawn strikes.

An official speaking to the Express said that they had SAR imagery to show that a building used as a guest house, where brother of Maulana Masood Azhar used to stay; an L-shaped building where trainers used to stay; a double-storied building used to house students entering the seminary and another building where those undergoing final combat training used to stay, were hit by the bombs.

He even added that the Jaish Madrasa that was selected was in the middle of nowhere and there was very small chance of civilian casualty. IAF had made use of Israeli S-2000 bombs which are also called SPICE bombs.

The S-2000 are highly accurate, jammer-proof bomb which works precisely even under heavy cloud cover. It penetrates through the roof, enters the building and explodes after a delay.

Photo: Reuters/ Indian Air Force officials display wreckage of an AMRAAM air-to-air missile that they say was fired by a Pakistan Air Force F-16 jet during a strike over Kashmir on Wednesday

It does not destroy the building rather is meant to hit the command and control centres. S-2000 used by IAF for the strike can be fired from a standoff distance of up to around 100 km.

It was also reported that according to government official the buildings had roofs which were made of corrugated galvanized iron (CGI) sheets and the SAR imagery shows that on the first day, these roofs had gone missing.

The roofs were repaired after a period of two days which made it difficult to assess the damage inflicted by technical intelligence.

It is upto the political leadership to decide if it wants to release “classified” data to the public.