Months after Opertaion Sindoor launched by India against pakistan to avenge the killings of 26 people in Kashmir’s Pahalgam by terrorists having links to Pakistan, the Indian Air Force (IAF) Chief, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh on Friday (Oct 3) said that Indian airstrikes on Pakistani airbases in May destroyed four to five PAF F-16 fighter jets.
Speaking on the occasion of 93rd Air Force Day celebrations, Singh said that India destroyed multiple Pakistani weapons and defence systems during the Operation Sindoor strikes.
Hailing India’s remarkable efficiency during the four-day conflict with Pakistan, the Air force Chief further said, “We struck a large number of installations … and what we have gathered from whatever reports we got, that on ground we destroyed radars at four places, command and control centres at two places … runway was damaged at two places … three of their hangars were damaged”.
“We have signs of one C-130 class of aircraft…and at least 4 to 5 fighter aircraft, most likely F-16, because that place happened to be F-16 with whatever was under maintenance at that time,” he added.
During his address, the Air Chief Marshal also spoke about India’s air defence system and it’s capabilities in precision strikes. He also hailed India’s success in achieving the longest successful missile strike of over 300 kilometres that crippled Pakistan’s actions.
“Our long-range SAMs that we had procured recently and operationalised…We could look deep inside their territory. We could make sure that they were not able to operate even within their territory up to a certain distance. It will go down in history that longest kill that we achieved of more than 300 kilometres by that. And it seriously curtailed their activities,” Singh said.
He then said that Pakistan was moved to a point by India to agree to a ceasefire and “ask for termination of hostilities”.
India too achieved its objective of destroying terror camps in Pakistan and thus agreed to ending the conflict, “which is something that the world needs to learn from us”, said Singh.
