The 2019 air strike on Jabba Top by the Indian Air Force (IAF) was a Rubicon moment for India, as offensive air power was used for the first time to strike terror targets inside enemy territory, to drive home the lesson that terror will come at a cost. Arguably, it deterred large-scale terrorist attacks for a little over seven years, till Pahalgam. Despite the nationwide outrage and pressure, the Government eschewed the option of a swift retaliation and instead chose to respond at its own pace, with a calculated multi-pronged approach. The close nexus between the Pakistani military and its proxy terror groups, and Islamabad’s past penchant for nuclear blackmail when under threat of any possible Indian military response, had constrained India’s response matrix in the past.
Two Air Chiefs have confirmed that despite the IAF’s readiness for a punitive response immediately after the Parliament and Mumbai terror attacks in 2001 and 2008, the option was not exercised by the Government. The choice of using offensive air power for an air strike in the prevailing no-war-no-peace (NWNP) conditions inside Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), to punish the Jaish-e-Muhammad for the Pulwama terror attack, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead in 2019, established a unique precedent. The airstrike importantly dispelled the long-held, misplaced notion in the larger national security context that the employment of air power in conflict was escalatory. Contrarily, kinetic air strikes have provided a much-needed political option to the national leadership to employ the military instrument of force within the escalatory dynamics of a nuclear-armed adversary, and therefore became the logical instrument of choice.
Air Power: The Instrument of Choice
With surprise no longer being a response option, India chose to retaliate in a time and manner of its choosing. India responded two weeks later, on May 07 at 01:15 AM, with coordinated air strikes, which for the first time struck multiple terror targets deep inside the heartland of Pakistan, the home of its power-brokers. The Indian response replaced the surprise of pre-emption with a surprise of scale. The deliberate and selective targeting of nine terror hubs simultaneously, five in POK and four in Pakistan, at depths ranging up to a hundred km and across a frontage extending over a thousand km, in an operation aptly named Sindoor, conveyed the fury of India’s ire. The IAF employed a combination of its advanced aerial assets comprising the Rafale, Sukhoi 30, Mirage 2000, and the MiG-29 fighter aircraft, with a lethal mix of long-range advanced specialist stand-off weapons such as the Hammer, Rampage, and Spice 1000/2000s, and supported by combat enablers which included Airborne Warning and Control System, Airborne Early Warning and Control and aerial refueller aircraft.