New Delhi: As Operation Sindoor began 7 May, the Indian military leadership were huddled together in an Army facility in the South Block watching the strikes unfold live.
Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan, Army chief Gen Upendra Dwivedi, IAF chief Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh, Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Tripathi, Army Vice Chief Lt Gen N.S.Raja Subramani and Director General Military Operations Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai were among those present at the facility.
Sources in the defence and security establishment said that room has facilities to get live transmission from multiple systems that were deployed by the three armed forces to track and carry out the strikes.
As mentioned by ThePrint earlier, the Indian Air Force, which was given the responsibility to hit 2 out of the 9 terror targets on 7 May, had used Scalp missiles, too. This missile relays back the continuous video from its tip during its flight with the pilot being able to navigate it.
The latest edition of the Army’s newsletter ‘Baatcheet’ focuses on Operation Sindoor and has five pictures of the senior military leadership and watching the giant screens in front of them.
The time stamp on one of the pictures is 0105 hours on 7 May, the exact moment when the strikes began. Of the 9 targets hit that night, seven were struck by the Indian Army using loitering munitions and other types of drones.
The seven locations included Sawai Nala Syedna Bilal, Kotli Abbas, Bhimber, Kotli Gulpur in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), besides Sarjal, Mehmooma Joya in mainland Pakistan.
The newsletter also mentioned that Army air defence had destroyed nearly 300 incoming Pakistani drones using L-70, ZU-23 guns, OSA-AK combat vehicles, and MRSAM (Medium-Range Surface-to-Air Missile) and Akash air defence systems.
It also names the creators of the Operation Sindoor logo—Lt. Col. Harish Gupta and Havildar Surinder Singh.
The Army also reiterated that The Resistance Front (TRF) was a front of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) along with the ‘Kashmir Fight’ and the United Liberation Front Kashmir. It added that Kashmir Tigers and People’s Anti-Fascist Front are frontal organisations of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: Op Sindoor: Inside story of what led Pakistan DGMO to make frantic calls for ‘ceasefire’
IAF given orders to stuck 2 out of 9 terror targets and in return losing multiple jets is a serious lapse. Why couldn’t we retaliate back when they downed our jets.