India’s Vice Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Narmdeshwar Tiwari, revealed that fewer than 50 weapons were fired by the Indian Air Force (IAF) to end May’s four-day military conflict with Pakistan. There was a long list of targets, but eventually the list was brought down to nine, the Air Marshal cited while addressing a media defence summit here on Saturday.
“From the list of options presented, we had a large number of target sets. And finally, we boiled down to nine. Key takeaway for us, that in less than 50 weapons, we were able to achieve conflict elimination. So this is the essential part which I want you to take away,” he stated.
“What we did in Op Sindoor was just a little snapshot of what capability the Indian Air Force brings to this country”, he added.
As informed by Air Marshal Tiwari, out of the nine targets, seven were given to the Indian Army, and two to the IAF — LeT headquarters, Muridke, and JeM headquarters, Bahawalpur.
He then added that the shortlisting of these targets started on April 29, with the date and time of the attack being decided on May 5.
New Delhi’s directives outlined three objectives: deliver a strong, visible response; send a deterrent message against future attacks; and the complete operational freedom to the armed forces, the Air Marshal stated.
"The precision targeting from this range is very very essential as it is very risky because the longer the vector, you feel that there are more chances of collateral (damage)." "But to the credit of our planners and credit of people who executed the missions, we were able to take out each target precisely. We were able to ensure there was no collateral damage. This is not an easy game," he said.
"You may have a long-range vector, but the work that goes behind making that vector or that weapon hit a target accurately is actually an effort of the whole team, not only the pilots who fired them. There are a lot of people on the ground who make that happen," he added.
After the strikes at the terror infrastructure, India informed Pakistan that it does not want to escalate the situation and the strikes were aimed at terrorist bases. But as Pakistan launched a military retaliation, India responded to it very strongly.
India’s Operation Sindoor was a retaliatory attack for the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, which killed 26 people. The op started on May 7, followed by four days of military conflict between India and Pakistan. The ceasefire agreement between the two neighbouring countries was made on May 10.
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