‘Op like a well-choreographed ballet’

NEW DELHI: India conducted pre-dawn aerial strikes on a major Jaish-e-Mohammed terror training facility at Balakot in Pakistan ’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region on Tuesday, breaking free of its self-imposed shackles in countering the cross-border proxy war fuelled by its hostile western neighbour for decades. The strikes came 12 days after the Pulwama terror attack claimed 40 CRPF troopers.This was the first time after the 1971 Indo-Pak war that IAF fighters deliberately crossed the Line of Control to pound targets. “The initial plan was not to cross the LoC because the JeM facility is just about 65 km away from there as the crow flies, and our weapons had significant stand-off ranges of 60-80-km,” a top defence source said.“But five to six Mirage-2000s did cross the LoC by over 10 km to let loose their weapons from 3.27 am onwards for a few minutes before turning back. All aircraft touched down at their home bases soon after 4 am,” he added.Twelve Mirage-2000 fighters, backed by four Sukhoi-30MKI jets for ‘air defence’ and two AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) aircraft as ‘eyes and ears of the strike package’, fired a mix of long-range Spice-2000 precision-guided bombs and AGM-142 (Popeye-2) missiles to destroy the sprawling Balakot facility, which housed over 300 terrorists, trainers and handlers.The entire two-hour-long operation which started with the Mirage-2000 jets taking off from Gwalior and culminating in all IAF planes touching down at their home bases was like a well-choreographed ballet in the skies, with multiple aircraft from different directions coming together in the top-secret plan for the crosstal installations.Even as IAF jets undertake regular combat air patrols (CAPs) to prevent any ingress by enemy aircraft, different airbases are also maintaining round-the-clock ORPs (operational readiness platforms). The latter basically means some fighter pilots are always ready in their combat gear to scramble with their fully-armed jets within a few minutes.